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Vivendi and Mediaset have reached an agreement to end a long-running legal battle in which the French media conglomerate will see it sell the majority of 29 percent of Italian television for the next five years.
Agreement he announced Monday night Vincent Bolloré, a French billionaire who controls Vivendi and including Canal Plus and Universal Music, will resolve the conflict he has waged against the family of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who runs Mediaset.
“Vivendi, Fininvest [the Berlusconi family holding company] and Mediaset is pleased to have reached a global agreement to end their disputes by rejecting all lawsuits and claims between them, ”the companies said in a joint statement.
The fight began in 2016 for Vivendi he agreed to buy Mediaset paid TV business for 800 million euros. Both teams had to take small minimum bets on each other’s capital in a play that was paving the way for construction. pan-Europe media player to take on new streaming players like Netflix.
But the deal he soon fell in the midst of a lawsuit over the valuation of a paid television business, Vivendi complained to Mediaset that it inflated financial results. This led Vivendi to create a stake in Mediaset a few months later when the Italian group saw the movement as an enemy.
The legal battle took place when Mediaset sued Vivendi in court. Italian regulators also examined the case, alleging that Vivendi owned 24 percent of Telecom Italia at the time, which violated anti-media concentration rules.
Over the last two years they have tried several times to resolve their differences to see if the conversations fail. It was a catalyst to try again last month when a Milan court ordered Mediaset to pay 3,000 million euros in damages and order Vivendi to pay only 1.7 million euros.
Under the new agreement, Vivendi has pledged to sell 19.2 per cent of Mediaset’s shares gradually over five years, at certain specific prices – from € 2.75 in the first year to € 3.10 in the fifth. You can withdraw your entire stake “at any time” if the Mediaset price reaches € 3.20. Shares closed at 2.69 euros on Monday.
The Fininvest family holding company has agreed to buy 5% of Mediaset’s shares at a price of 2.70 euros per share. At the end of this process, Vivendi will have a remaining 4.61 percent stake to be sold at any time or at any price.
Vivendi will end up selling its Mediaset shares for less than 1.26 million euros paid in 2016, now worth around 920 million euros. The 2020 annual report disclosed the average purchase price of 3.70 euros per share.
Vivendi also said that Mediaset will now cancel its proposal to move its legal headquarters to the Netherlands with the aim of continuing its international expansion. Mediaset has said it wants to seek links with other European broadcasters to compete more effectively with streaming services.
Both Vivendi and Mediaset are now run Purchase of M6, the second largest private television station in France, which is being auctioned off by RTL Group.
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