Vivendi: Press Release
April 08 2015 - 01:46PM
Business Wire
Regulatory News:
Vivendi (Paris:VIV):
Over the last few days, the Management Board of Vivendi as well
as the Chairman of its Supervisory Board have discussed with the
representatives of P. Schoenfeld Asset Management (PSAM).
These conversations have led to the following points being
acknowledged:
PSAM said it understood and accepted Vivendi’s strategy aimed at
setting up a large group focused on media and contents, by building
on UMG and Canal+ assets. It acknowledged that Vivendi’s management
team and, in particular, its Chairman of the Supervisory Board, had
achieved significant results in terms of creating value.
For its part, Vivendi’s Management Board decided that, in order
to reach consensus with some minority shareholders, payouts to
shareholders could be accelerated despite the complexities that may
result for the redeployment of Vivendi in media and contents.
Vivendi’s Management Board has accordingly decided that, further to
the completion of the divestments of GVT and the residual stake
held in Numericable-SFR, it will convene a General Shareholders’
Meeting with a view to proposing to shareholders the additional
distribution of €2 per share, with €1 to be paid out in Q4 2015 and
€1 in Q1 2016.
These exceptional distributions are to be added to Vivendi’s
existing commitment to pay out a €1 ordinary dividend per share, in
both financial years 2016 and 2017. The Management Board and the
Supervisory Board confirm their commitment to this €1 dividend. In
total Vivendi is committing to return €6.75 billion (€5.00 per
share) to shareholders.
Furthermore, Vivendi will review the possibility to propose
additional distributions if its acquisition strategy were to
require less cash than anticipated over the next two years.
Arnaud de Puyfontaine, the Chairman of the Management Board,
stated that “these distributions demonstrate our willingness to
reach a consensus with some of our minority shareholders, even if
it may result in reduced flexibility for Vivendi in the
implementation of its strategic ambition to build a major media and
content group.”
Vincent Bolloré, the Chairman of Vivendi’s Supervisory Board and
the group’s reference shareholder, furthermore stated that “he
fully supported the decisions taken by the Management Board that
have been made possible only by the excellent work carried out with
respect to asset divestments”. Lastly, he said that “as a
shareholder, he would vote in favor of all the draft resolutions
submitted by the Management Board to the General Shareholders’
Meeting”.
PSAM informed Vivendi that, as a result of such decisions, it
withdraws the draft resolutions that it has presented to the
Shareholders’ Meeting to be held on 17 April 2015, will approve all
the draft resolutions put forward by the Management Board and will
vote against the resolution which aims at avoiding the double
voting right rule.
Buoyed by the ability to understand each other highlighted by
their dialogue, PSAM and Vivendi agreed to carry out a review of
the situation by 2017.
About Vivendi
Vivendi groups together leaders in content and media. Canal+
Group is the French leader in pay-TV, also operating in
French-speaking Africa, Poland and Vietnam; its subsidiary
Studiocanal is a leading European player in production,
acquisition, distribution and international film and TV series
sales. Universal Music Group is the world leader in music. Vivendi
Village brings together Vivendi Ticketing, Wengo (expert
counseling) and Watchever (subscription video-on-demand). In
addition, Vivendi currently owns GVT a fixed very high-speed
broadband, fixed-line telephony and pay-TV services operator in
Brazil. www.vivendi.com
Vivendi
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