The French audiovisual landscape will be changed. The maritime transport group CMA CGM, owned by billionaire Rodolphe Saadé, announced this Friday March 15 that it had signed an agreement to buy Altice Media, parent company of BFMTV and RMC, from businessman Patrick Drahi.
“The CMA CGM Group today signed a promise to purchase with the Altice France group with a view to acquiring 100% of the capital of Altice Media,” the buyer indicated in a press release, specifying that the value of The company in the transaction was 1.55 billion euros.
According to Altice Media, the transaction “is expected to be finalized during the summer.” CMA CGM indicated that it would take 80% of Altice Media, with the remaining 20% to be acquired by Rodolphe Saadé’s holding company, Merit France.
Altice France, in a separate press release, announced “exclusive negotiations” to sell 100% of Altice Media to CMA CGM and Merit France for a total cash amount of 1.55 billion euros. “Patrick Drahi expresses his full confidence in Rodolphe Saadé, with whom he has maintained close and friendly relations for many years, his family, CMA CGM and Merit France, to continue to invest and develop Altice Media,” added Altice .
Considerable debt
Patrick Drahi was a seller due to his considerable debt. It retains Altice’s other activities, namely the telecoms operator SFR, and smaller companies in technologies and telecoms. The CEO of Altice France, Arthur Dreyfus, welcomed the possibility of “writing the next page of our group” in a message to his colleagues.
“After the creation of BFMTV in 2005 by Alain Weill (owner of The Express), then the entry into the group’s capital by Altice and Patrick Drahi in 2015, these are two exceptional periods of ten years each which made it possible to raise our RMC and BFM brands to the best levels”, he affirmed. BFMTV is the number one continuous news channel in France, closely followed by CNews, a subsidiary of Vivendi, the group of another billionaire, Vincent Bolloré.