Vivendi closes Editis sale for €653m

Vivendi announced on Tuesday 14th November that it had closed the sale of Editis, France’s second largest publisher, to International Media Invest (IMI) for €653m.

This includes the reimbursement of Editis’ debt and is considerably less than the €900m Vivendi paid Spain’s Grupo Planeta for the publisher in 2018. 

The sale of celebrity magazine Gala to the newspaper group Le Figaro should go through by the end of this month, Vivendi said in a statement. This will complete the two asset-shedding conditions the European Commission set for Vivendi to acquire the Lagardère Group, which owns Hachette Livre, the leading French book publisher. 

The takeover “should take place in the coming weeks, allowing Vivendi to fully implement its ambitious development plan,” the statement added.

“No publishing house anywhere in the world is worth what it was a few years ago,” commented Jean-Clement Texier, honorary president of the French subsidiary of Ringier, a Swiss media group. "There are multiple reasons for this, such as higher interest rates, rising paper prices and the fact that some sectors don’t work as well as they used to,” he told The Bookseller. Also, uncertainty over Editis’ future hampered development, sales and profitability, and problems arose in the education division, which had long been a major cash machine, he added.

On Wednesday 15th November, Catherine Lucet will replace Michèle Benbunan as managing director of Editis. Lucet was head of Editis’ education and reference division, and group deputy managing director, until she left in October 2022.

Didier Glachant, an official of the trade union CGT, notes Lucet left the group with an unknown but undoubtedly hefty severance package. “Managers negotiate their departures well,” he said. “Thought should be given to the conditions for their return.”

On 8th November, Lagardère announced that Arnaud Lagardère, chairman and c.e.o. of the Lagadère group, would take over from Pierre Leroy as head of Hachette Livre. The aim was to build on the publisher’s “major projects and successes of recent years” as Vivendi’s acquisition of Lagardère was about to go ahead, it said in a statement.