The board of France's Bouygues is said to be mulling an increase in its offer to buy the French mobile network SFR ahead of an informal deadline imposed by SFR's owners.
Citing two people familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported that the improved offer being considered could see the cash portion of its bid raised by EUR900 million to EUR 11.4 billion (US$15.8 billion).
The rest of the offer is in shares in what would be a merger between SFR and Bouygues's mobile network subsidiary, Bouygues Telecom.
Bouygues has already offered to sell its network infrastructure to rival network, Free in order to secure regulatory approval for the bid. It however faces a rival bid from the cable operator, Numericable.
Numericable is though not expected to be able to raise its offer by too much as the cost savings it expects to generate are not thought to be as high as those that the Bouygues offer could cause.
Vivendi, the conglomerate that owns SFR has asked both bidders to submit final offers by the end of today.
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