After months of postponements and about-faces, the interminable file of the resale of Editis has just suddenly accelerated. This Tuesday, Vivendi (owner of the number two French publisher) announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiations with International Media Invest (IMI), the subsidiary of the Czech holding company CMI belonging to the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky (which owns several titles press releases such as “Elle”, “Marianne”, etc.).
The group controlled by the Bolloré family specifies that this sale will concern the entire capital of Editis. A real change of course for Vivendi which has been defending, since this summer, a listing-distribution arrangement on the stock market with the resale of only part of the capital to one or more buyers. But this operation was not hardly to the taste of the European Commission which ultimately risked putting a veto on Vivendi’s entire takeover bid on the Lagardère group, which notably owns Hachette, the French leader in publishing and number three in the world.