Bolloré, the ‘Napoleon of the media’ who now wants to conquer Prisa

The French businessman, with stakes in Vivendi and Universal Music, is redoubling his efforts to control the European press, from Lagardère to the editor of The country. The businessman would have promised to leave all his positions in 2022, when he turns 70.

Two hundred years ago, the streets of Madrid were abuzz with the cry of die the french against Napoleon’s troops. Today, everything is different. France is a friendly country, but it is enough for a Frenchman to arrive in Spain with pretense of control for some to feel the chills again.

Vincent Bolloré entered the capital of Prisa in April (The country, Ser string, Santillana) with a 9.93% stake, but it seems that he wants more. If not, why did Vivendi -Bolloré’s company- present a request “to obtain authorization from the Council of Ministers to acquire Prisa shares representing up to 29.9% of its capital stock”, as Prisa communicated to the CNMV on October 25?

Conjectures aside, Vivendi pointed out in his letter to Prisa that, for now, he was not in negotiations with anyone to buy more shares.

“Vincent Bolloré, an empire built on financial blows”, he titled two months ago The world. “The Breton industrialist has achieved most of his conquests by staying below the threshold of 30% of capital, the threshold from which a takeover bid is mandatory,” wrote journalist Isabelle Chaperon. That strategy may work for the French tycoon, but it is also true that the French press is a complex game of interests between millionaires.

The world is owned by Xavier Niel (owner of the teleco Iliad) and the banker Matthieu Pigasse, according to the media cartography produced last year by The diplomatic world and Acrimed. Bernard Arnault, patron of LVMH, controls The echoes and The Parisian; the Bouygues family (construction, telecommunications) owns the televisions TF1 and LCI; Dassault (military aircraft, software) own Le Figaro; Patrick Drahi, owner of the teleco Altice, has BFM TV and Release and participate in L’Express; François-Henri Pinault (Kering) owns the weekly Point, and Vincent Bolloré has to his credit Canal+ and CNews (conservative in tone), which it controls through Vivendi, a company owned by Bolloré SA, which is under the umbrella of Financière de l’Odet.

But there is still more. “Lagardère will soon be digested by the ogre Bolloré”, he published in September Release, in reference to Vivendi’s takeover of Arnaud Lagardère’s media group after buying part of the Amber Capital fund (also present in Prisa). Thus, the publishing house Hachette, the radio Europe 1, the weekly Sunday Newspaper and the magazine Paris Match They will be handed over to Bolloré and his dolphins Cyrille and Yannick.

“Never before has such horizontal and vertical concentration been achieved in the world of media and communication. A further sign of our democratic collapse,” Martin Orange stressed two months ago in the digital newspaper Mediapart. In October, he published this medium, Hervé Gattegno, editor of Paris Match and Sunday Newspaper, “in a move precipitated by photos that embarrassed far-right essayist Éric Zemmour, another Bolloré employee, who is expected to run in next year’s French presidential election.”

Vincent Bolloré, business man With an immeasurable curriculum, he was born in 1952 in the outskirts of Paris. He was a director of the Bank of France and became president of the family business, Papeteries Bolloré, in 1981, a firm that began trading in 1985 and on which he built his empire. His current businesses include the communications firm and marketing Havas (chaired by his son Yannick), Universal Music Group (a very profitable record company that separated from Vivendi, went public in September and of which it has 18%), or Blue Systems, with which it manufactures batteries for buses. After betting for years on Ubisoft video games, in 2018 it sold its 27.3% stake to various investors, including Tencent, for 2 billion euros.

But, in addition, Bolloré – a friend of Sarkozy, not so much a friend of Macron – is present in 42 African ports as a container terminal operator, shipping line agent or stevedore. However, as published The world In October, the businessman asked Morgan Stanley to find buyers for Bolloré Africa Logistics. A business that put him under judicial investigation in 2018 for alleged corruption to obtain port concessions in countries such as Guinea and Togo.

Bolloré will be remembered for many things, but also as the man who struck down the Guiñoles in 2018 from the grid of Canal+

“He is partly an activist investor, partly a private equity financier in a country that loves neither one nor the other; a corporate ‘pirate’ who watches over the shareholders’ records of august companies,” they said of Vincent Bolloré in The Economist, in a 2019 article. The structure of its emporium is so interwoven that “when a company pays a dividend, the money goes through several holdings before a party returns to its own bank account. ”

Last year, in an extensive article about his career, L’Express He described it like this: “In Bolloré, there is a touch of Georges Duroy, the amoral seducer of Maupassant, a touch of Dumas’s Edmond Dantès in his thirst for revenge, and a touch of Van Hamme’s Largo Winch in the uninhibited and unbridled man of business”.

Mentioned The Economist that Bolloré has promised to leave all his positions in 2022, when he turns 70 and the family business, 200. Without a doubt, he will be remembered for many things, but also as the man who struck down the Guiñoles in 2018 from the grid of Canal+, as well as the satirical program The small newspaper by Yann Barthès. Vincent Bolloré made his position clear a few years ago in an interview with the public radio France Inter: “I prefer when [los empleados de Canal+] they are more dedicated to discovering than to ridiculing. “