By Natalie Huet and Gilles Guillaume PARIS (Reuters) – French conglomerate Bouygues, having lost out in a takeover battle for Vivendis telecoms business SFR, risks becoming prey rather than predator in a domestic mobile market with scope for more consolidation. Losing SFR to rival Numericable is a setback for tycoon Martin Bouygues, who founded Bouygues Telecom in 1994, spending billions to turn it into number three in the French mobile phone market behind Orange and SFR. Bouygues and Iliad, the number four mobile player, became unexpected allies during the fight for SFR. And now Iliad, with a market capitalization of around 10 billion euros, could try to swallow Bouygues, worth roughly 5 billion.
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