AIRLINK 205.81 Increased By ▲ 5.52 (2.76%)
BOP 10.24 Decreased By ▼ -0.25 (-2.38%)
CNERGY 7.06 Decreased By ▼ -0.15 (-2.08%)
FCCL 34.66 Decreased By ▼ -0.28 (-0.8%)
FFL 17.10 Decreased By ▼ -0.32 (-1.84%)
FLYNG 24.68 Decreased By ▼ -0.17 (-0.68%)
HUBC 131.18 Increased By ▲ 3.37 (2.64%)
HUMNL 13.98 Increased By ▲ 0.17 (1.23%)
KEL 4.91 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-1.8%)
KOSM 6.81 Decreased By ▼ -0.22 (-3.13%)
MLCF 44.34 Decreased By ▼ -0.28 (-0.63%)
OGDC 221.77 Decreased By ▼ -0.38 (-0.17%)
PACE 7.22 Decreased By ▼ -0.20 (-2.7%)
PAEL 42.69 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-0.26%)
PIAHCLA 17.13 Decreased By ▼ -0.26 (-1.5%)
PIBTL 8.42 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-1.06%)
POWER 9.09 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-0.66%)
PPL 190.86 Decreased By ▼ -1.87 (-0.97%)
PRL 43.49 Increased By ▲ 1.99 (4.8%)
PTC 24.79 Increased By ▲ 0.35 (1.43%)
SEARL 102.66 Increased By ▲ 1.39 (1.37%)
SILK 1.02 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-2.86%)
SSGC 42.74 Decreased By ▼ -1.13 (-2.58%)
SYM 18.40 Decreased By ▼ -0.36 (-1.92%)
TELE 9.26 Decreased By ▼ -0.28 (-2.94%)
TPLP 13.15 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.54%)
TRG 68.78 Increased By ▲ 2.59 (3.91%)
WAVESAPP 10.42 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-1.04%)
WTL 1.80 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (1.12%)
YOUW 4.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.99%)
BR100 12,034 Decreased By -5.6 (-0.05%)
BR30 36,777 Increased By 88.7 (0.24%)
KSE100 114,496 Decreased By -308.5 (-0.27%)
KSE30 36,003 Decreased By -99.2 (-0.27%)

Vivendi has reached an agreement to buy out partner Lagardere's 20 percent stake in pay-television operator Canal+ France for 1 billion euros, according to Le Monde and Les Echos newspapers. Reacting to the reports, Lagardere said there were ongoing discussions with Vivendi to come to an agreement. A spokesman for Vivendi declined to comment.
If an accord is finalised, it will put an end to a long-running battle between the two French media groups and mean that they essentially meet one another halfway on the price following legal mediation that begin in May. Lagardere valued its stake in Canal+ France at 1.15 billion euros in its accounts, while Vivendi believed it was worth around 800-900 million euros, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters earlier.
Canal+ France is a unit of Canal+, Vivendi's international pay-TV business, which is smaller than British peer BSkyB and News Corp-owned pay-TV operators in Europe. For Vivendi, an accord would rid it of the minority shareholder in Canal+ at a time when pay-TV is set to become a bigger priority. Vivendi is in the midst of a restructuring to pay down debt, shed telecom assets in Morocco and elsewhere and focus on its TV and music businesses.
Canal+ contributed roughly a quarter of Vivendi's sales of 10.84 billion euros in the first half of the year. Those figures are restated to reflect Vivendi's sale of Maroc Telecom and video games maker Activision Blizzard. Vivendi and Lagardere have been in court since February when Lagardere sued Vivendi for 1.6 billion euros ($2.21 billion) in damages over Canal+. It argued that Vivendi makes permanent use of the business's entire cash surplus under a disputed cash management agreement between the venture and its parent company.
They began arbitration in May, which was extended by several weeks in early October to try to reach an accord. UBS analyst Polo Tang, who values Lagardere's Canal+ France stake at 800 million euros, said the accord, if confirmed, was good for Lagardere shareholders because it could lead to further cash returns. "For Vivendi, we see the move as negative," wrote Tang, arguing that Canal+ was a low-growth asset that has been hurt by competition from subscription sports channel BeIn Sport, which is backed by Gulf TV broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Copyright Reuters, 2013

Comments

Comments are closed.