PARIS (Agefi-Dow Jones) – The Senate commission of inquiry on media concentration in France announced on Monday that it would continue its investigations by launching in January a cycle devoted to major shareholders and managers of the main French players in the sector, including Vincent Bolloré , Bernard Arnault and Arnaud Lagardère.
“The committee’s work will now get to the heart of a subject literally at the heart of the news with the proposed merger between TF1 and M6, but also the acceleration of the merger between Vivendi and Lagardère”, said Laurent Lafon, the chairman of this commission, quoted in the same press release.
As part of its investigations, the Senate commission of inquiry into media concentration in France will hear from Vincent Bolloré, the majority shareholder of the Bolloré group and the former chairman of the supervisory board of Vivendi and Canal Plus, on 19 next january. The next day, the committee will hear Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, and Arnaud Lagardère, CEO of Lagardère.
The publishing and media group Vivendi announced last month that it had acquired Amber Capital’s stake in Lagardère and indicated that it would launch a public tender offer (takeover bid) aimed at the remainder of the capital of the distribution and marketing group. media in February 2022. Vivendi holds 63,693,239 Lagardère shares representing 45.13% of the company’s capital, while Financière Agache, an investment company controlled by Bernard Arnault, has nearly 10% of the shares.
Nicolas de Tavernost, the chairman of the management board of M6, will be auditioned on January 28, and Gilles Pélisson, the CEO of the TF1 group, will be heard on February 14. The Competition Authority is due to render its decision on the merger between the two companies next October, while TF1 and M6 hope to seal their union in early January 2023.
-Dimitri Delmond, Agefi-Dow Jones; +33 (0) 1 41 27 47 31; [email protected] ed: VLV
Agefi-Dow Jones The financial newswire
Dow Jones Newswires
January 10, 2022 08:55 ET (13:55 GMT)