(Paris) French luxury giant LVMH has entered into exclusive negotiations with Lagardère to buy Paris Matchsealing the agreement between billionaires Bernard Arnault, who has dreamed of taking over the weekly for years, and Vincent Bolloré.
Lagardère “received a purchase offer regarding the stock Paris Match from the LVMH group”, announced Tuesday the media group officially passed into the fold of Vincent Bolloré in November.
Lagardère’s board of directors “has decided to begin exclusive discussions” with LVMH, Lagardère said, on the occasion of the publication of its annual results.
Contacted by AFP, LVMH confirmed this information, without providing further comments.
Already owner of daily newspapers The Parisian And The echoesand minority shareholder of Lagardère, Bernard Arnault has long coveted the weekly, for which he had already made, in 2021, an offer which also concerned the Sunday newspaper (JDD), another emblematic title of the Lagardère group.
The sale “will undoubtedly take time” and would probably have to go through discussions with the unions of Paris Matchindicated Arnaud Lagardère, CEO of the eponymous group, during a conference call.
“Reconciliation Trophy”
This announcement comes as Lagardère’s media division (Europe 1, Europe 2, RFM, JDD, Paris Match) shows a decline in its turnover of 9% in 2023.
It created a surprise, three months after the sale of Gala to the Figaro group.
Vivendi had sold its celebrity magazine in order to meet EU requirements to buy Lagardère, and thus keep Paris Matcha title sold nearly 450,000 copies each week in 2023, according to the Alliance for Press and Media Figures (ACPM).
However, the sale of Paris Match “was in the pipeline for a few weeks or months,” said a journalist from the weekly interviewed by AFP, referring to a “non-aggression pact” concluded between Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bolloré.
“Discussions” between the two men and their children “have always existed,” commented a source close to the Bolloré and Lagardère spheres. “The Arnault and Bolloré families did not want to get angry, the trophy of reconciliation is Match. »
According to the same source, “Bernard Arnault has had a very strong desire, for a long time, to integrate Match into his group”, because it is “a brand which represents a large part of France”.
“75 years in spring”
In addition, the billionaire and the magazine “were born in the same month of the same year” in March 1949: they will both celebrate “their 75th birthday in the spring”. And the business leader shares his birthplace, Roubaix, with that of the founder of Paris MatchJean Prouvost, notes this source.
Will this birthday gift be perceived as such by the editorial staff of Paris Matchwhich has repeatedly expressed concern about interference from Vincent Bolloré in its editorial line?
“This is necessarily good news,” said the journalist interviewed by AFP, assuring personally that he had never been pressured. “I prefer to have a shareholder who is not so politically marked,” he justified.
“I didn’t want Vincent Bolloré to make Paris Match what he did with CNews and JDD”, which became “tribunals of a very conservative right or even more so if there are affinities”.
All the Lagardère group’s main media outlets have experienced turmoil since Vincent Bolloré became its main shareholder. In 2021, Europe 1 was emptied of its editorial staff after a historic strike, a scenario which recurred two years later at the JDD.
It remains to be seen what impact the sale will have on the organization of Paris Matchjoined in particular in 2022 by the figure of CNews, Laurence Ferrari.
“I don’t see how she could stay at Match, unless she leaves CNews,” predicts the journalist.
The weekly’s employees can leave the title since its acquisition by Vivendi, via a transfer clause, which will last beyond November, in the event of a new acquisition by LVMH.
Fears within the editorial staff of Les Échos and Le Parisien have arisen in recent months regarding their independence from their shareholder.