French PA raises concerns over merger of Hachette Livre and Editis

The French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) and a group of authors have sounded alarm bells over the imminent merger between France’s two largest book publishers, Hachette Livre and Editis, into a single media group.

Vivendi, which owns Editis, plans to launch a takeover bid for the Lagardère group, which owns market leader Hachette Livre, next month. The French book trade “has never been threatened by such a (massive) concentration,” the SNE said this week. 

The association urged the French and European authorities “to prevent any risk of abuse of dominance and any asymmetry that would damage free competition and cultural diversity”. The authorities should guarantee equitable access to the retail and rights markets, as well as to raw materials and the media. This is “a necessary condition for the balanced development of our sector, with its social, educational and cultural stakes (and) free expression of ideas.” 

Hachette Livre and Editis did not sign up to the SNE statement. In separate release, Editis said the deal aims to “build a stronger actor in a world market that is in major upheaval”, and that it “actively participates in defending independent booksellers”.

Vivendi said last month that it would seek approval for the deal from the European Commission and other competition authorities before the end of this year. It explained that it could proceed with the takeover before that without contravening the law because it would not exercise its voting rights in Lagardère before it receives the relevant approvals. 

The takeover is "a threat to freedom of creation and expression", according to the group of 10 authors which has also raised concerns. The transaction is a reverse of what occurred in 2002, when Lagardère bought Vivendi Universal Publishing (VUP), and was forced by the Commission to sell off 60% of the assets. The remaining houses became Editis. "When two groups devour each other, we cannot remain mere spectators at a strange and lamentable animal show", the authors said in an op-ed published in the newspaper Le Monde. "The publisher-author relationship is already very unbalanced, (and) if a single group is in a dominant position in certain editorial segments, it will be only more inequitable," added the 10, comprising Belinda Cannone, Noëlle Châtelet, Irène Frain, Anne-Marie Garat, Véronique Ovaldé, Marie Sellier, Carole Zalberg, Paul Fournel, Christophe Hardy and Pierre Jourde. 

The authors also called for a clause in rights contracts to allow them to cancel the contract when their publisher is sold to a rival.