Even before Editis (Robert Laffont, 10/18, Bouquins, Julliard, La Découverte, etc.) changed ownership, the number two French publisher, still 100% owned by the Vivendi group, announced on Wednesday January 4 the appointment of Guillaume Dervieux, close to Arnaud de Puyfontaine – Chairman of the Executive Board of Vivendi –, as Deputy Director of Strategy and Group Transformation. He also joins the executive committee of Editis.
Since the departure, at the end of October 2022, of Catherine Lucet, who headed the education division, the general public activities of this entity had been taken over by the president of Edi8, Vincent Barbare, while the school, training and innovation were temporarily handled by Michèle Benbunan, Managing Director of Editis, assisted by Benjamin Tancrède. In addition, the direction of the literature division was to be filled since Jean Spiri, also former secretary general of Editis, had been appointed, at the end of November, director of cabinet of Brigitte Macron.
The appointment of Mr. Dervieux comes in a turbulent context. Vivendi, which in February 2021 launched a public takeover bid (OPA) for the Lagardère group (the parent company of Hachette, world number three in publishing and number one in France), finally decided, in the summer 2022, to separate from Editis, thus hoping to pass more easily under the scrutiny of the anticompetitive authorities of the European Commission.
A good student
Initially, Vincent Bolloré’s group wanted to merge Hachette and Editis, but gave up on this hypothesis which had caused an outcry in the publishing world. Brussels has launched an in-depth investigation into this takeover bid and must or may not give it the green light by May 23.
The process of selling Editis – considered a “remedy” for this merger – would have started with the presentation of offers by the pre-selected candidates. For the time being, Vivendi is still proposing its distribution-listing scheme, with the sale of 29.6% of the shares held by Vincent Bolloré to a reference shareholder and the rest of the capital would be put on the stock exchange and allocated to Vivendi shareholders, in proportion to the shares they already hold.
Guillaume Dervieux has a publishing manager profile. His peers consider him a good student who knows how to cut into the costs of a company and rationalize it. His relations with the authors can sometimes be a bit complicated. He began his career in 1992 as editorial director at Wolters Kluwer, then at Vivendi Universal Publishing until the end of 2002 before taking over as general manager of Armand Colin (Hachette group) for five years. This former graduate of Sciences Po and of the ESCP-Asfored specialized master then joined Albin Michel, where he remained for eleven years and became the vice-president of the group. Given as the successor to Francis Esmenard, he was finally preferred to the former CEO of Flammarion, Gilles Haéri.
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