UK venture capital group Cinven has tabled a E2 billion offer for Vivendi’s business to business (B2B) magazine portfolio, the French media group revealed this morning. The management of Vivendi is supporting the offer despite ‘several’ other approaches for the business, reportedly from the likes of Reed Elsevier, Pearson, VNU and EMAP (see EMAP May Be Interested In Vivendi Specialist Mags).
Cinven’s offer is described by Vivendi as the ‘most coherent’ as it will keep the magazine portfolio intact; it also the highest value bid. Cinven only recently divested of interest in UK magazine publisher IPC Media in a £1.15 billion sale to AOL Time Warner (see
AOL Takes IPC Media For £1.15bn).
The professional publishing division of Vivendi includes a number of trade magazines – mainly French – from farming and building titles to a number of medical and health publications. Vivendi put the business up for sale following its acquisition of US publisher Houghton Mifflin.
The Cinven deal is expected to be made exclusive within the next few days and finalised before 30 October.
The divestment of Vivendi’s B2B and health activities enables the company to focus on general public publishing and to considerably reduce the proportion of its business that depends on advertising revenues. Including the planned divestment of free sheet company Comareg, this portion will be reduced to just 1% of Vivendi Universal’s business. The sale of the publishing division will also finance the whole of the Houghton Mifflin acquisition in a very short time span, the statement says.
