Vincent Bolloré and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière play cat and mouse. The two billionaires meet face to face on the occasion of the sale of Webedia. According to various sources, the owner of Vivendi is targeting the digital content and entertainment company owned by his rival, Fimalac.
Their battle is also a family affair. Vivendi chairman Yannick Bolloré is at the helm. Opposite, the wife of Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, Véronique Morali, runs Webedia, owner of the brands Allocine, Purepeople, easyVoyage, 10 Sport… She is also part of the board of directors of Lagardère together with Arnaud de Puyfontaine, the head of Vivendi . . Finally, Fimalac and Vivendi have invested in the empire of Stéphane Courbit, who runs the world leader in television production, Banijay. The seller and the acquisition candidate know each other well.
negotiation game
Fimalac has put it up for sale and will receive the first purchase offers at the end of the month. The suitors are not very numerous at the moment. The big French media groups like TF1, M6 are not interested. Neither do the rest of the magnates in the sector, nor Daniel Kretinsky, nor Xavier Niel and his company Mediawan.
An American industrialist and a Middle Eastern fund are in the running, the latter having already offered a good price. And Vivendi who “hesitates to continue”, according to several sources close to the group. Those around him say that the price Fimalac is asking for, around one billion euros, is too high. Webedia achieves 435 million billings for 80 million euros of gross margin, according to the company. “It is Bolloré’s game to lower the price, explains a source familiar with the matter. But Webedia is interested”.
Integration with Prism
Vivendi’s strategic objective would be to integrate it into its press division, Prisma, acquired last year from the German Bertelsmann, owner of the newspapers Capital, Management, Geo, Femme Actuelle…
The players in the sector believe that Webedia is worth half of what Fimalac expects, around 500 million euros. It is a unique company that brings together media, entertainment and gaming activities, without a competitor like this. “She is difficult to value,” admits a relative. In Fimalac’s accounts, the company was valued in any case at 600 million euros in 2019.
Source: BFM TV
