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The European Commission said Tuesday it has launched an investigation into whether French media group Vivendi breached rules ahead of sealing its acquisition of publishing and retail conglomerate Lagardere. online news
The EU executive said the probe was to see whether Vivendi started implementing the merger before getting a green light, and if it began the process to divest assets to seal the deal without the commission giving its needed approval for buyers.
The commission on June 9 had announced it authorised the merger, on condition that Vivendi sell its Editis publishing business and celebrity magazine Gala, because of overlap with Lagardere’s Hachette publishing unit and Paris Match magazine.
If Vivendi is found to have jumped the gun on the commission’s antitrust and merger rules it could face fines of up to 10 percent of aggregated turnover.
“The European Commission has decided to open a formal investigation to determine whether, when acquiring Lagardere, Vivendi breached the notification requirement and ‘standstill obligation’ set out in the EU Merger Regulation, as well as the conditions and obligations attached to the Commission’s decision to clear the Vivendi/Lagardere transaction,” it said in a statement.
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Notes from APS Radio News
In 2022, its revenue was about 9.6 billion euros During that year i had a loss of about one third of a billion euros.
For a number of years, Vivendi has owned UMG or Universal Music.
Internet radio and various online streaming services are required to pay royalties to UMG for the broadasting of material in which it has a copyright interest.
However, at the end of the first quarter of 2020, Vivendi completed a partial sale of Universal Music Group (UMG) to a consortium led by Tencent, a Chinese media conglomerate. The amount of stake of the world’s largest record label group that has been sold to the consortium is 10% and the valuation of which was $3.3 billion. The Tencent-led consortium retained an option to purchase another 10% at the same valuation until January 2021, which they opted to exercise in December 2020.
