Capital Markets News: Numericable to buy Virgin Mobile in France; Oracle borrows to finance acquisitions

Numericable Group to buy Virgin Mobile in France
French cable company Numericable has agreed to buy Virgin Mobile in France for roughly $450 million. Numericable, which has a significant fiber footprint, also bought French wireless carrier SFR this year for $23 billion.
Virgin Mobile France is currently owned by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and U.K.-based retailer Carphone Warehouse. Numericable is controlled by billionaire Patrick Drahi, who has built his empire by purchasing mobile operators and cable companies in Europe.
Oracle borrows $10 billion
Oracle has tapped the bond market to finance acquisitions, the biggest of which is its $5.3 billion purchase of Micros Systems announced last week. According to Bloomberg, Oracle has raised $10 billion and is paying 3.4% on its 10-year bonds and 2.3% on its five-year notes.
Oracle’s 2014 acquisitions to date include:
– BlueKai, a cloud-based big data platform used for mobile marketing.
– LiveLOOK (pending), a cloud-based, real-time visual collaboration and screen sharing tool.
– Corente, a WAN vitualization platform that helps customers provision virtual private networks.
– GreenBytes, a specialist in deduplication, replication and virtualization.
– Micros Systems, a software and hardware supplier to the retail and hospitality industries.
Oracle’s five 2014 acquisitions follow seven 2013 acquisitions, including the software giant’s purchases of Acme Packet and Tekelec.
Data center specialist raises $50 million for acquisitions
Involta has raised $50 million in equity financing from an investor group that includes M/C Partners and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners. The investors say the round will enable the seven-year-old company to make strategic acquisitions and give shareholders some liquidity.
Involta operates multi-tenant data centers in Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, Idaho and Arizona. The company hopes to expand to other parts of the country. “We envision Involta playing a leading role in the data center space in the coming years, particularly in tier-two and tier-three markets that are still very underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure,” said Gillis Cashman, managing partner, M/C Partners. “There is a tremendous need for infrastructure in those areas.”