Patrick Drahi

Telecom magnate Patrick Drahi holds 60% of the stock of Altice NV, the publicly-traded multi-national he founded. Drahi built Altice with more than 20 acquisitions of lagging cable and mobile operators and has expanded further with highly leveraged deals. Through the Netherlands-based Altice he owns 75% of Numericable, France's largest cable operator. He stormed the U.S. in 2015 by buying a 70% stake in cable operator Suddenlink for $9 billion deal and snapping up Cablevision for $17.7 billion.Those U.S. entities were spun off into Altice USA, which went public in June 2017. He owns about 35% of the new company.