2023-09-04 14:00:25
Posted Sep 4, 2023, 4:00 PM
It’s a disaster for the Moselle professional press group Téma (trade name of 6TM), publisher of 40 magazines and 36 websites in agriculture, transport, human resources and animal health. Several titles should disappear, while this family group of professional press, founded by the entrepreneur François Grandidier, is in financial difficulty, having to repay 14 million euros in loans guaranteed by the State (PGE) obtained during the health crisis, according to “The Letter A”.
According to information from the specialist letter, which we were able to confirm, the magazines “Liaisons sociales” and “Entreprise & Carrières”, reference publications for science and human resources, resumed in 2016, will cease to be published. Contacted, the Téma group indicates that it is thinking about repositioning on a digital format “Company & Careers”, of which it owns the brand. No project is envisaged for “Social Liaisons”, the brand being operated in digital format by the Scandinavian group Karnov.
The publisher of the two titles, Social RH Publications, was placed in compulsory liquidation on July 12, as was the Société de presse internationale, publisher of “L’Antenne”, which specializes in multimodal transport, of the “Journal de la and “Navigation, Ports & Intermodality”. For these two companies, a job protection plan targets 67 employees, according to Téma, the vast majority of whom are freelancers, for a total of 14 full-time equivalent jobs. Two employees have been reclassified in the group, according to the human resources department.
scissor effect
Finally, three other companies in the group have recently requested their placement in receivership, “Actualités socialesweeklies” (“ASH”), “SCM” (“Supply Chain Magazine”) and the holding company Info6TM. Pending the court’s decision, expected on October 11 at a next hearing, some salaries have not been paid, but “they will be”, assure the representatives of Tema. Two companies in the group’s tourism division (Media and Tourism, and Tourism and passenger transport) had already been placed in compulsory liquidation in 2022. The shutdown of the tourism sector during the health crisis had been fatal to them.
Weakened by the Covid-19, which is causing its revenues to fall, the Téma group then faced the soaring price of paper. This scissor effect could not be overcome. Former employees also denounce an “incomprehensible” strategy, marked by a high turnover of management teams. “The group was already fragile before the Covid”, insists a former member of the house.
Téma claimed at the start of the year an annual turnover of around 45 million euros, nearly 400 employees – more than half of whom were journalists, regular freelancers included – and around 750,000 subscribers for its various titles. The company has accelerated its digital transformation since 2022, notably with the release last spring of a digital portal dedicated to transport and logistics, bringing together its titles on the sector. An agriculture portal is to go live this fall.
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