By Jason Chow
PARIS--French luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said
late Tuesday it has entered exclusive negotiations to purchase the
newspaper franchise Le Parisien/Aujourd'hui from media company
Groupe Amaury.
"This well-known and respected publication would make a material
contribution to our group," said Francis Morel, chief executive of
Groupe Les Echos, the media arm of LVMH that owns Les Echos
business newspaper, in a statement.
Philippe Carli, chief executive of the privately held
family-owned media company, said Groupe Amaury was selling the
newspaper to focus on its sports-related properties. Groupe Armaury
owns L'Equipe, a sports daily newspaper, and runs sporting events
such as the Tour de France bike race and the Paris Marathon.
Mr. Carli said that LVMH approached Groupe Armaury "in recent
weeks" about buying Le Parisien, which he said turned a profit
during the first quarter without citing numbers.
"When we received this opportunity from LVMH, we thought, 'why
not?' This may be the moment to accelerate our sports business," he
said.
Groupe Amaury posted EUR690 million (US$750.1 million) in
revenue for 2014, Mr. Carli said--the majority of which came from
its sports businesses.
Le Parisien, a daily tabloid based in Paris, along with its
sister publication Aujourd'hui, which is published in regions
outside of Paris, have long been rumored to be for sale. In 2010,
Groupe Amaury hired an investment bank to sell the newspaper but
later pulled the publication off the block after it failed to get
bids at the EUR200 million it was seeking, French media reported at
the time.
Neither Groupe Amaury nor LVMH would disclose the price of the
transaction. The deal will include AM Diffusion, a media
distributor, as well as a printing press in Saint-Ouen, a northern
suburb of Paris.
LVMH's bid for Le Parisien marks the latest in a wave of
ownership changes in the French press. Cable and telecoms
billionaire Patrick Drahi bought Libération et L'Express earlier
this year. Last year, popular newsweekly magazine Le Nouvel
Observateur was sold to Le Monde, a daily newspaper controlled by a
trio of French businessmen.
Write to Jason Chow at jason.chow@wsj.com
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