Stupor in the middle of the cinema. The sale process of CGR, the second circuit of theaters in France, which seemed to arrive in its final stretch before the 76e Cannes Film Festival, was brutally stopped revealed French Film, Wednesday, May 3. The discussions broke down between Charles and Jean-Luc Raymond, the two brothers who own the seventy-three cinemas and the finalist buyer, the trio made up of Pierre-Antoine Capton, Matthieu Pigasse and Xavier Niel (the latter two being shareholders of the World individually).
In March 2022, the heirs of the founder had first wanted to sell, for nearly a billion euros, the entire group, including the hotel and catering part. The latter was finally excluded from the scope of the sale to keep only the assets related to the cinema: namely the theaters (which recorded eighteen million admissions in 2022), but also the distribution company Apollo Films and the very promising ICE Theaters immersive projection system. The latter is already shown in forty-five cinemas in France, but also in the United States, Spain, Saudi Arabia and India. The expected price, 700 million euros, was lowered during the final discussions to around 500 million euros. Twenty initial offers had been submitted to the two banks in charge of the file, Edmond de Rothschild and Société Générale, including, at the end of the competition, that of the Capton-Niel-Pigasse trio, that of the investment fund Eurazeo, and that of the real estate investor Aermont Capital.
Punish
The last successful offer was presented personally by the three businessmen and not through their joint audiovisual production company, Mediawan, in which the American fund KKR is a shareholder. Indeed, the hypothesis of a buyout of a cinema circuit by non-European investors would have displeased the Ministry of Culture.
Was the proposed sum deemed insufficient for these heirs classified as 148e French fortune of the magazine’s 2022 list Challenges ? Or is it an ego problem? The end of the negotiations was in any case accompanied by a decision as violent as it was unprecedented: Jocelyn Bouyssy, the general manager of CGR Cinémas since 2006, as well as three of his followers, Jean-Charles Gau, financial director, Clément Foussal of Belerd, director of human resources and Robert Laborie, director of development, were all laid off Tuesday, May 2 by Charles Raymond, effective immediately. Laurent Desmoulins, who manages the hotel division, will act as general secretary.
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