The $48.5bn (€35.6bn) winning bid for Canada's BCE, the largest private investment-backed acquisition to date, is keeping up the frenzied pace of leveraged buyouts as a losing private equity group and a telecoms rival weigh their options.

The bid for BCE, formerly Bell Canada, was submitted by a consortium led by Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and backed by US private equity groups Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn. Canadian law requires that its citizens be majority owners of domestic corporations.