India's Bharti Global has completed the purchase of its 24.5 percent stake in BT Group from Altice founder Patrick Drahi.
Drahi agreed to sell the stake in BT in August, as part of an effort to reduce Altice's debts. The deal sees Bharti become the top shareholder of the company.
Bharti's acquisition of the stake has been carried out in two stages, with the company initially acquiring 10 percent of BT shares from Altice back in August, before the remainder of the deal was completed this week as per a BT investor filing.
Bharti's stake in BT is worth around £3.6 billion ($4.56bn) based on BT’s share price of 148 pence.
Drahi only increased Altice UK's stake in BT to 24.5 percent in May of last year, and even had plans to increase it to nearly 30 percent.
However, after years of acquisitions, the company has been looking to shift assets in order to pay down its mounting debt, which sits at around $60bn.
The company is open to selling its telecoms business and has recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which was then sold to Morgan Stanley.
Altice has been in talks over a deal to sell its Portuguese mobile unit, but ended talks with Saudi Telecom Group (STC) in June, while the Portuguese unit of Altice has also been separately looking to sell off its data center unit.
Altice Portugal has been grappling with a corruption probe, which led to the arrest of Drahi's fellow co-founder and former chief operating officer Armando Pereira. Drahi told investors last August that he felt "betrayed."
Bharti, founded by billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, has sought opportunities beyond India but ruled out a full buyout of BT, estimated to be worth $17bn, before the announcement of the deal.
Ironically, BT previously owned a 21 percent stake in Bharti Airtel between 1997 and 2001, a subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises Limited.
The company has been heavily linked with a sale of its international unit in recent weeks.
In September, Carlos Slim, once the world's richest man, increased his stake in BT to 4.3 percent via his family investment firm after it had initially acquired a 3.2 percent stake in June.