Bouygues freshened its offer for SFR again ahead of parent Vivendi’s crucial board meeting today to discuss the rival bid from Altice.

Vivendi’s board meeting comes at the end of three weeks of exclusive negotiations with Altice and is expected to decide that bid’s fate.

Meanwhile Bouygues is attempting to make the Vivendi board think twice by increasing the cash element of its bid by €1.85 billion to €15 billion.

However, its latest offer also reduces the equity interest retained by Vivendi in the merged Bouygues-SFR entity to ten per cent, valued at €1 billion. Previously, the stake was 21.5 per cent.

The new offer also includes an earn-out clause of €500 million that could lift the total value of the bid to €16.5 billion (on top of €15 billion cash and €1 billion equity).

Also, Bouygues said the SFR merger would generate a total of €10 billion in synergies.

The new offer is valid until 25 April.

And Bouygues has said it has lined up a list of blue-chip French firms to invest a total of €2.85 billion in the Bouygues-SFR entity.

These investors include, amongst others, AXA, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, GIMD (the Dassault family), JC Decaux Holding, GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, the Pinault family and Reuben Brothers.

If a deal went ahead, Bouygues would invest €850 million in addition to the contribution of its equity interest in Bouygues Telecom and would be the controlling shareholder of Bouygues-SFR with a 51 per cent stake alongside Vivendi (10 per cent) and the other institutions (39 per cent).

An IPO of the new entity would occur as soon as the merger is completed.