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The media company founded by Silvio Berlusconi struck a stumbling block in its candidacy for the control of the German broadcaster Prosiebensat.1 after the Czech investment company PPF Group made a rival offer and sought to strengthen its influence.
Mediaforceurope, who belongs to the majority to the family of the deceased Italian Prime Minister and who is the largest shareholder in Prosieben, made an offer in cash and shares of around € 5.7 per share to increase his participation in the news and entertainment group based in Munich to 100%.
This offer, which opened its doors to shareholders last week and is valid until the beginning of June, is part of a long duration of the son of Berlusconi and chief executive officer of MFE, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, to build a pan -European media empire.
But Monday, PPF – who was founded by the late Czech businessman Petr Kellner and holds just under 13% of Prosieben – said he would make an offer of € 7 per share. He described his offer as more “convincing” than that of MFE, who was as low as possible authorized by regulators.
PPF insisted that he did not intend to make a buy -off offer from Prosieben, the second largest private broadcaster in Germany in terms of the audience.
If it is accepted, the transaction would bring its participation to 29.99% – just below the 30% threshold at which German regulations would require making an offer to buy the remaining shareholders.
Instead, the Czech group said that it wanted to increase its representation within the Prosieben supervisory board and strengthen its support for the besieged broadcaster management team, led by General Manager Bert Habet, who was under the fire of MFE.
More than to double his participation in Prosieben, which announced last week 400 job cuts in the context of a cost reduction campaign, would put the influence of the PPF on the broadcaster and its monitoring council almost equally with MFE, whose participation amounts to just over 30%.
This would give PPF a blocking minority, paving the way for corporate battles with MFE for the appointments and dismissals of the members of the Board of Directors and the Managers, as well as financial decisions.
Didier Stoessel, PPF investment director, said: “Despite the challenges of Prosiebensat.1 and the turbulent market environment, I believe that the management of prosiebensat.1 has the right strategy in place, which we fully support.”
He said it was important for Prosieben to sell non -essential assets – such as the online beauty retailer bottle and the parish of the dating site – “to the right evaluation”. On the other hand, MFE sought to force the company to sell the assets as quickly as possible.
He added: “With a more solid representation of shareholding and the proportional supervisory board, we will be able to support more actively the management of the prosiebensat.1 With our experience, namely the digital revitalization of the commercial models of linear television.”
MFE said last week that she did not expect to carry out a majority participation in Prosieben, but that he prefers to assess the potential for cooperation between the German company and its Italian and Spanish channels.
MFE did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
