The supervisory board for France's Le Monde is meeting Monday to choose new owners for the iconic but debt-saddled newspaper — owners who will take control out of the journalists' hands for the first time since 1951.
The journalists' committee that oversees strategic choices at Le Monde overwhelmingly backs a bid by a business trio formed by Internet billionaire Xavier Niel, Lazard banker Matthieu Pigasse and Pierre Berge, an arts patron and longtime partner of the late designer Yves Saint-Laurent.
A rival bidder, a group that includes the owner of Spain's El Pais and France's former state telecoms monopoly, said hours before the meeting that it would pull out.
Le Monde says it needs help to pay off debts and survive punishing times in the media industry and is looking for an estimated euro100 million ($124 million) capital increase. Le Monde needs the cash fast and would become bankrupt at the end of June if it doesn't receive new capital, spokeswoman Anne Hartenstein said.
France's telecoms giant, Orange, which made a joint bid with the French Nouvel Observateur magazine and the Spanish group Prisa, owner of El Pais, issued a statement Monday to announce the group would not maintain its offer after the journalists' committee favored the other bid by 90 percent.
The supervisory board meeting Monday is to choose to enter exclusive talks with a bidder, conditional on a deposit of euro10 million. It is widely expected to select the business trio, known by the acronyms of the three men's last names: BNP. |