French billionaire Patrick Drahi puts $25M in Nevis airport

French telecoms billionaire Patrick Drahi is putting $25 million into the expansion of the main airport on Nevis, a Caribbean island of about 12,000 people where he has made his home, in a project its government says will let most of the world’s private jets land there.

Drahi’s money is the largest single piece of the financing for the redevelopment of Vance W. Amory International Airport, which broke ground on July 1. Taiwan is lending $20 million on concessional terms, and the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank is lending 20 million Eastern Caribbean dollars, or about $7.4 million, with a guarantee from the federal government of St. Kitts and Nevis.

The project will extend the runway by 2,000 feet to 6,000 feet and add a parking apron for up to 50 executive jets, a fuel farm, a fire station, a bigger terminal and a new customs hall. The contractor, Kelly Construction, expects to finish within 18 months.

“Having an advanced Vance W. Amory International Airport is good for Nevis and good for the Federation,” Premier Mark Brantley said at the groundbreaking. “Sometimes we have to be patient and appreciate that projects take time.”

How the deal works

The Nevis Island Administration first disclosed talks with Drahi in January 2023. At the time, Brantley described a public-private partnership in which Drahi would pay for construction and be repaid from the revenue the expanded airport generates, at a nominal interest rate of 2%. The island’s port authority would staff and run the facility, and the government would waive duties on materials and equipment imported for the project.

“He has made Nevis home, and he has invested significantly on the island already,” Brantley said then. He described the goal as “a very high-end private jet facility that will allow most of the world’s private jets to land here.”

The deal took years to close. In March 2024, Alexis Jeffers, the premier’s adviser on investment, said only a nonbinding memorandum of understanding had been signed with Drahi. A consultant’s estimate presented in November 2024 put the total cost at more than $47 million, including about $11 million to buy land from residents. The final terms of Drahi’s $25 million have not been published.

The St. Kitts and Nevis Observer, in an editorial on Oct. 12, said questions had been raised about Drahi’s motives for backing the project but called the redevelopment “a win for Nevis.” Nevis’s current runway is too short for many regional jets, and most visitors arrive on small turboprops or through neighboring St. Kitts. The expansion is expected to allow regional jets such as the Embraer 175 to fly in directly, along with larger private aircraft.

A 20-year push

Nevis has tried to lengthen the runway for more than two decades. The government of Vance Amory, the former premier the airport is named after, commissioned a study in the early 2000s and approached the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development for money, but the financing never came. The project stalled after his Concerned Citizens’ Movement lost power in 2006 and was revived when the party returned in 2013. Perez Engineering was hired to design it in 2015.

The island already draws wealthy visitors to the Four Seasons Resort Nevis and its private estates, and the government is betting that a dedicated jet apron will bring more of them.

The man behind Altice

Drahi, 63, was born in Casablanca and moved to France as a teenager. He built Altice into one of Europe’s biggest cable and telecom groups through a string of debt-funded acquisitions, including French mobile operator SFR in 2014 and US cable companies Cablevision and Suddenlink in 2015. He also owns the auction house Sotheby’s and Israeli cable operator HOT, and in 2023 became the largest shareholder in BT Group, Britain’s former state telephone company, with a 24.5% stake.

His fortune peaked at about $26.5 billion in 2015, according to Forbes. It has since shrunk to about $8.6 billion as rising interest rates exposed the debts behind his empire and he sold assets to pay them down, including a $1 billion stake in Sotheby’s to Abu Dhabi’s ADQ and his French media group, Altice Média, to shipping billionaire Rodolphe Saadé.

Drahi, who holds Israeli and Portuguese citizenship, lived in Geneva for 25 years before moving to Israel in 2024.