Retirement is tomorrow.

Or not.

Thursday, February 17, 2022 will be the day of the bicentenary of the Bolloré family business, and should mark the retirement of Vincent Bolloré's business, but this now seems very hypothetical, as there are still many issues to settle.

“Today, I finish giving up my position as advisor, after having been a leader until three years ago.

My family agreed to continue this industrial saga.

She will represent the seventh generation, "explained the industrialist on January 19 as part of a Senate commission of inquiry into media concentration.

Still several important files to manage

"I will leave my place when we celebrate the bicentenary of the group", added the billionaire, 70 years old in April, at the head of an empire with a foot in industry (Bolloré group in transport and logistics) and the another in the media (Vivendi).

However, the bicentenary will finally be celebrated twice: the first time on Thursday in Ergué-Gabéric, near Quimper, where the head office of the company, Compagnie de l'Odet, is located, then, in July, with great fanfare. with several hundred people.

But the prospect of the handover seems to be receding as the deadline approaches: it will be postponed due to several important files to be managed, BFM Business said last week.

Among which: acquiring the entire capital of the Lagardère group – an operation whose start is expected by the beginning of March –, preventing the American investment fund KKR from gaining a foothold in Telecom Italia – of which Vivendi is the leading shareholder – and convincing the Spanish government to let Vivendi take nearly 30% of the capital of the media group Prisa, which owns the daily El Pais, against 9.9% currently.

Not to mention the planned sale of the group's logistics branch in Africa, undermined by several legal proceedings, which he intends to carry out.

A fine connoisseur of the Bolloré universe recalls that the businessman "has started a process of transferring responsibilities" to his children, "which is largely achieved but not completely".

His 42-year-old son Yannick, CEO of Havas since 2013, became chairman of Vivendi's supervisory board in 2018, while his younger brother Cyrille, 36, took over the reins of the Bolloré group in March 2019.

He will always guard the control tower

“It is impossible to know when he will decide to fully realize his withdrawal.

Anyway, even if he realizes it, he will always keep the control tower of the Compagnie de l'Odet "which he chairs, the same source believes.

This holding, piloted by the only billionaire, is at the head of the Bolloré empire, shaped in forty years through acquisitions and which now totals around 80,000 employees and 24 billion euros in revenue.

Vincent Bolloré likes to recall that in the early 1980s, when he got down to the recovery of the family stationery then in difficulty, it "employed just under 800 people" for a turnover of 20 million euros.

Since then, it has developed in the media – sometimes at the cost of brutal changes –, between audiovisual (Canal+ group and its channels C8 and CNews or radio Europe 1), press (Prisma Media, the leading group of magazines in France, the

JDD

,

Paris-Match

, Prisa in Spain), advertising/communication (Havas), publishing (Editis) or telecoms (Telecom Italia).

Facing the senators, Vincent Bolloré denied any political objective in his strategy of acquisitions in the media, while his detractors denounce in particular a news channel CNews which would have become the mouthpiece of his conservative opinions.

"Stop Bolloré", a group of unions, associations, media and personalities

Moreover, a collective called "Stop Bolloré", made up of unions, associations, media and left-wing personalities, launched an appeal on Wednesday to denounce the constitution by the billionaire of a "sprawling media empire" accused of serving an "ideology reactionary”.

“This media concentration is unprecedented in our history.

Under our incredulous eyes a retrograde revolution is taking place which it is urgent to prevent, ”argues the appeal, presented at a press conference in Paris.

It is notably signed by journalists' unions (SNJ, SNJ-CGT), associations (Attac, Maison des potes, Mrap), media (review Regards) as well as journalists and left-wing personalities (Edwy Plenel, Daniel Schneidermann, the lawyer Arié Alimi, the historians Mathilde Larrère and Laurence de Cock…).

The collective targets in particular the CNews channel, accused of feeding "an obsession with far-right themes".

Via some of its members, he seized the Arcom (ex-CSA) about "multiple shortcomings" observed according to him in the program "Face à l'info".

Between 2019 and 2021, it hosted journalist Eric Zemmour, now a far-right candidate in the presidential election.

In addition, member structures of the collective have filed a complaint against X for in particular "provocation to arm themselves against a part of the population without follow-up".

Filed Wednesday with the Paris prosecutor's office, this complaint targets comments made by Eric Zemmour on CNews.

Media

Hachette: The publishing world in uncertainty over Vincent Bolloré's projects

Series

“Paris Police 1900”: Vincent Bolloré had the script “rewritten”

  • Retirement

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