"Le Monde": Xavier Niel buys a large part of the daily newspaper

Héloïse Goy with Alexis Patri 11:16 a.m., January 26, 2022

There is change on the side of the shareholders of the newspaper and the group "Le Monde". The businessman Xavier Niel recovers a large part of the shares of Mathieu Pigasse. Until now, the former investment banker held 51% of the shares in the structure "The new world". This structure owns 40% of the "Le Monde Libre" holding company, majority shareholder of the "Le Monde" group (

,

,

,

and 

). On Tuesday, the "Le Monde" group announced that Matthieu Pigasse was selling almost all of his stake to his partner Xavier Niel.

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A 35 million euro operation with no impact

Matthieu Pigasse, who held 51% of the shares of the "Le nouveau Monde" group, only holds 2% after this operation.

And Xavier Niel recovers 49% of his shares.

The other half of the structure is still owned by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.

The holding "Le nouveau Monde" is one of the shareholders of the company "Le Monde libre".

The latter owns 72.5% of the "Le Monde" group and 99% of the weekly L'Obs.

From now on, Xavier Niel therefore owns 74.5% of the "Free World".

This operation will have no impact on the control of the group because, independently of this financial transaction, Matthieu Pigasse remains co-manager of the "Free World".

The amount of this transaction has not been made public.

But according to information from our colleagues from the newspaper 

, the amount would be around 35 million euros.

A sum that corresponds to the investment of Matthieu Pigasse in the press group since its takeover in 2010.