Heloise Goy with Alexis Patri
The businessman Xavier Niel recovers a large part of the shares of the former investment banker Matthieu Pigasse within the holding company “Le nouveau Monde”. This structure owns 40% of the “Le Monde libre” holding company, the majority shareholder of the “Le Monde” group (“Le Monde”, “Le Monde interactive”, “Télérama”, “La Vie”, “Courrier international”).
There is change on the side of the shareholders of the newspaper and the group “Le Monde”. The businessman Xavier Niel recovers a large part of the shares of Mathieu Pigasse. Until now, the former investment banker held 51% of the shares in the structure “The new world”. This structure owns 40% of the “Le Monde Libre” holding company, the majority shareholder of the “Le Monde” group (The world
, The Interactive World, Telerama, The life and International mail). On Tuesday, the “Le Monde” group announced that Matthieu Pigasse was selling almost all of his stake to his partner Xavier Niel.
A 35 million euro operation with no impact
Matthieu Pigasse, who held 51% of the shares of the “Le nouveau Monde” group, only holds 2% after this operation. And Xavier Niel recovers 49% of his shares. The other half of the structure is still owned by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. The holding “Le nouveau Monde” is one of the shareholders of the company “Le Monde libre”. The latter owns 72.5% of the “Le Monde” group and 99% of the weekly L’Obs. From now on, Xavier Niel therefore owns 74.5% of the “Free World”.
This operation will have no impact on the control of the group because, independently of this financial transaction, Matthieu Pigasse remains co-manager of the “Free World”. The amount of this transaction has not been made public. But according to information from our colleagues in the newspaper Le Figaro, the amount would be around 35 million euros. A sum that corresponds to the investment of Matthieu Pigasse in the press group since its takeover in 2010.