Paris (AFP)

The new owner of L'Express and CEO of Altice France Alain Weill defended Monday his project of "transformation" of L'Express, even if it passes by "painful" decisions with more important job cuts than announced at the beginning of the year.

"My first motivation is to redo L'Express a great brand, a weekly that works and is growing," he justified on Franceinfo.

"Having a new shareholder at Express who has an ambition and a vision is first and foremost the good news, having a leader who wants to save this brand", even if it is with "an ambitious vision and sometimes painful, "he said.

Alain Weill, CEO of Altice France (parent company of SFR and numerous media including Libération, BFMTV, RMC), bought this summer the group a majority stake in the capital of the Express, of which Altice remains the minority shareholder. According to the entrepreneur-manager, this takeover must help stop the magazine's heavy losses, thanks to a redesign of editorial and commercial positioning, accompanied by a change in its publication date.

Since mid-October, several unions and the Society of Journalists of the weekly protest against the announcement of a plan for safeguarding employment, including the removal of 26 positions in the editorial staff, and following the departure 58 journalists following the change of shareholder of L'Express.

That enough to melt the workforce of the weekly at a hundred positions, against 172 before the arrival at the controls of Mr. Weill, according to these organizations.

On Franceinfo, Mr. Weill said the jobs in the newspaper will be reduced to "120 employees including those who will be transferred to a joint subsidiary for Liberation and L'Express", saying that "for an ambitious weekly is quite reasonable, it's realistic, with this staff we can make a weekly of very good quality ".

Minimizing the eddies in the newspaper caused by this downsizing, he assured that "tomorrow L'Express will be a newspaper of better quality than in recent years", while recognizing that his recovery project is "a high-risk enterprise ".

© 2019 AFP