Xavier Niel eyeing the press by taking shares of La Provence and Nice-Matin

Xavier Niel will he offer his Delta Freebox to employees of Nice-Matin?

The founder of the Iliad group, already a shareholder in Le Monde, has this time decided to take an interest in the regional daily press, even if his attention is more focused on one of the two titles. 

Since he adopted the look "beard of the third day", do not believe that Xavier Niel runs smooth, quite the contrary. Always on the lookout for new investments, the boss of Free has just taken significant shares in two of the main newspapers in south-eastern France and actors in the regional daily press (QPR): La Provence and Nice-Matin. The billionaire is already a shareholder of the World, title of the national daily press (PQN).

Xavier Niel recovers shares of a Belgian group

According to the statements of the Liège newspaper La Meuse, Xavier Niel entered the capital of La Provence up to 11%, and the capital office-Matin up to 34 %. Note that for the latter, the remaining 66% is held by the 456 media employees. The boss of Free has actually bought the shares that the Belgian investment fund Nethys had in both dailies. On this issue, Niel was competing with Rodolphe Saadé, CEO of CMA-CGM, and Iskandar Safa, owner of Current Values.

After investing several million euros in its capital entry in 2015, Nethys disagreed with Bernard Tapie, majority shareholder, on the valuation of La Provence. Thus, the Belgian company has never activated the option that could have allowed it to climb to the capital of 34 or 49%.

More interested in Nice-Matin than in Provence

Beyond the Belgian withdrawal, Bernard Tapie would not have appreciated the arrival of Xavier Niel to the capital. The founder of Free would have taken a surprise approach in the negotiations to acquire the shares of Nethys, which was obviously not well received. 

The former boss of the OM, facing the prospect of having to possibly pay the hundreds of millions of euros received at the Adidas Credit Lyonnais arbitration, questioned the motives of Xavier Niel. In the south of France, the market shares of the regional press are divided between a few actors. In its geographical area, La Provence remains the only leading regional media for example and is not threatened by competition, weak in a region where the press is struggling to develop. 

So Niel would, according to Mediapart, decided to immediately transfer his shares redeemed La Provence (11%) to CMA-CGM. He would, therefore, be officially and really interested only in Nice-Matin. The synergies seem almost obvious. Nice-Matin also manages the daily Monaco-Matin under his direction. Xavier Niel owns Monaco Telecom, the local operator in the Principality.