PARIS, Oct 2 (Reuters) – Vivendi plans to maintain shopping for shares in Lagardere and is open to buying activist fund Amber Capital’s stake within the firm, which may set off a young provide for the remainder of the Lagardere’s inventory, Vivendi mentioned in a submitting on Friday.
Vivendi VIV.PA, the French media group managed by billionaire Vincent Bollore, is Lagardere’s LAGA.PA prime shareholder with a 26.7% stake.
Amber, in the meantime, owns 20% of the corporate, dwelling to France’s greatest publishing home Hachette and a journey retail division.
Amber and Vivendi are looking for board illustration at Lagardere and are calling for a shareholders’ assembly, which Lagardere, led by the founder’s inheritor Arnaud Lagardere, has to this point flatly refused.
They’ve signed a five-year pact that features a reciprocal proper to pre-emptively purchase the share every firm owns in Lagardere if considered one of them had been to promote.
“Vivendi intends to proceed its purchases (of shares) … together with by means of the train … of the rights of first provide and pre-emption granted by Amber Capital,” the Paris-based group mentioned in an announcement to French markets regulator AMF.
“Vivendi does not intend to take management of Lagardere,” the group mentioned in the identical assertion, however added that if it had been ready to have the ability to purchase Amber’s shares, it could fulfil the duty of constructing a bid for all Lagardere’s shares.
Underneath French regulation, crossing the 30% threshold in an organization’s share capital robotically triggers a young provide for the remainder of the shares.
Loss-making Lagardere has turn into the unlikely goal of a proxy battle between a few of France’s prime businessmen, after the agency’s managers sought assist to fend off a marketing campaign by Amber to shake up the corporate’s governance.
Bernard Arnault, who runs the world’s greatest luxurious group LVMH LVMH.PA, mentioned final week his household holding firm owned greater than 5% of Lagardere, and that he was dedicated to the integrity of the group’s primary actions.
(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Modifying by Mark Potter)
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