(CercleFinance.com) – M6 shares soared for the second consecutive session on Friday on the Paris Stock Exchange, still driven by speculation surrounding a possible takeover of the television channel after the failure of its merger project with TF1.
Following these rumours, relayed this morning by several market participants, the M6 stock climbed 7.2%, the biggest rise in the SBF 120 index at the end of the morning, after having already taken 6.4% yesterday.
In the wake of the abandonment of the merger with TF1, the media group Bertelsmann, the main shareholder of M6 via its subsidiary RTL (with 48% of the capital), would seek an alternative and would have asked the buyers to come forward from here today.
“This very tight schedule is explained by the license renewal that M6 must request in May 2023 and which means that the group will not be transferable for five years”, explain the analysts of Invest Securites in a reaction note.
‘The transfer should therefore be signed by the end of October, in order to allow time for the Competition Authority and Arcom (ex-CSA) to decide,’ explains the brokerage firm.
Among the many interested potential buyers would be Xavier Niel, Vivendi, NRJ, Altice, Daniel Kretinsky, a consortium led by Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM), Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière (Fimalac) and Stéphane Courbit (Banijay).
These rumors come after the announcement, last Friday, of the abandonment of the merger project of the TF1 and M6 groups, as indicated in a joint press release by Bouygues, TF1, M6 and RTL Group, almost sixteen months after the announcement of their reconciliation.