PARIS (Reuters) – The CMA CGM group announced on Friday the signing of a purchase promise with the heavily indebted Altice France group, with a view to acquiring the entire capital of Altice Media, parent company of BFMTV and RMC.
This acquisition will be carried out jointly by CMA CGM and its family holding company Merit France, at 80% and 20% respectively, on the basis of an enterprise value of 1.55 billion euros, the group indicates in a press release.
CMA CGM, which already owns the newspaper La Tribune, thus places the continuous news channel BFMTV in its possession.
BFMTV experienced a meteoric rise in France in the 2010s, becoming omnipresent in the country’s bars and cafes and often imposing the media narrative, with its 24-hour news banner scrutinized by numerous political advisors and business leaders.
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Its change of ownership will be examined by the French political class, in a context where the CNews channel, owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré, represents a growing challenge for BFM.
This is not the Saadé family’s first breakthrough in the world of media.
Last year, it launched a Sunday edition of La Tribune, in direct competition with the Journal du Dimanche, a once-renowned weekly taken over by Vincent Bolloré.
A source close to CMG CGM then told Reuters that Franco-Lebanese Rodolphe Saadé wanted his media to offer a “nuanced” vision of the world and not fuel “the flames of extremism”.
“With this acquisition project, we have the ambition to continue our long-term development in the media sector,” Rodolphe Saadé said in a press release on Friday.
POWER AND INFLUENCE
According to media industry analysts, the high price of the buyout, more than 14 times Altice Media’s Ebitda, likely reflects the additional level of power and influence that ownership of these well-known media brands will give Rodolphe Saade.
CMA CGM’s profits have exploded with the strong recovery in ocean freight following the COVID-19 pandemic. The group took the opportunity to invest in the media, with the acquisition last year of La Tribune, and the year before of the regional dailies La Provence and Corse Matin.
Rodolphe Saadé regularly took part in Emmanuel Macron’s trips abroad as CEO of a flagship of the French economy.
Altice founder and owner Patrick Drahi, who recently pledged to reduce his company’s debt through asset sales, said the deal would allow BFMTV and radio station RMC to continue to develop.
BFMTV reports 12 million daily viewers. CMA CGM said it had asked Altice Media’s management team to remain in place.
CMA CGM, which has plenty of cash, already owns the regional newspapers La Tribune, La Provence and Corse Matin and has a stake of more than 10% in M6, the second largest private television channel in France.
The group, which aims to establish in the long term a “Reference Media Pole” promises an “editorial project, promoting pluralism, independence and journalistic ethics”.
The operation is subject to information and consultation procedures with staff representative bodies as well as obtaining the necessary regulatory authorizations.
(Reporting Sudip Kar-Gupta, Inti Landauro, Gus Trompiz and Mathieu Rosemain; written by Inti Landauro, Ingrid Melander and Michel Rose; French version Mathias de Rozario; edited by Kate Entringer)
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