Xavier Niel has submitted an offer to buy the M6 group in duo with MediaForEurope, the television group founded by Silvio Berlusconi.
After the failure of the merger between TF1 and M6, Bertelsmann, shareholder of the Six must not waste time to sell its 48% stake in the French group. If the sale does not take place before the renewal of M6’s frequency next May, it will have to wait until 2028 according to French legislation.
And everything might be played out at the end of the week according to a source familiar with the matter, reveals Le Figaro. Three declared candidates are now in pole position. The first is a trio made up of Stéphane Courbit (FL Entertainment), Rodolphe Saadé (CMA-CGM), and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière (Fimalac).
More surprisingly, the second is an unprecedented duo made up of the founder of Free, Xavier Niel, and MediaForEurope, the television group founded by Silvio Berlusconi. According to another source close to the negotiations, their offer would be “very ahead in financial terms”, reports for its part Les Echos. Finally, the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, already present in several media in France, is also in the race with an offer at first sight “very below” the other two.
The three suitors would have all submitted an offer of more than 19 euros per share, i.e. nearly 1.1 billion euros on the table to buy Bertelsmann’s stake in the French group headed by Nicolas de Taversnot (TV channels M6, W9, 6ter, Teva, Gulli and RTL, RTL2, Fun Radio).
A victory for the Niel-Berlusconi duo would allow MediaForEurope to establish itself in a new geography following Italy, Spain and Germany and thus pursue its strategy of becoming a European champion once morest the American giants. For his part, the founder of Iliad might benefit from significant political support in Italy in order to continue his investments on the other side of the Alps. Last week, the telecom magnate took a 2.5% stake in the capital of the British giant Vodafone, and this only a few months later was refused an offer around the acquisition of the Italian activities of the latter via the house- Free’s mother.
Source : Le Figaro, The echoes, Point
This article was taken from the Univers FreeBox website
