Vivendi has updated its plans to separate into various companies, as previously announced in December. The new plan calls for the company to split into three distinct entities.
One of these would be the newly named Louis Hachette Group, which includes Vivendi’s 63.5% majority stake in Lagardère, the parent company of Hachette Livre, and 100% ownership of Prisma Media, which is primarily a magazine publisher. The name honors Louis Hachette, the founder of the eponymous publishing group who, according to Vivendi, was also the "inventor of the modern concept of travel retail and of one of the first general public leisure magazines." This company would be listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.
The other two companies would be the film and TV company Canal+, listed on the London exchange, and Havas, an advertising and communications conglomerate, to be listed in Amsterdam. A fourth entity, which would focus on investments, was part of the company's roadmap in December, but no mention of it was made in the recent update.
For the plan to progress, it must be approved by various European legal and financial entities and then approved by a two-thirds majority of Vivendi shareholders at a meeting scheduled for December. Following the allocation of the shares of the entities resulting from the split, the Bolloré Group, a Paris-based business conglomerate with activities in energy and media, would hold approximately 30.6% of the share capital and voting rights of the Louis Hachette Group and Canal+.
The proposal comes after Vivendi completed its majority acquisition of Lagardère last year, which led Vivendi to sell the French book publisher Editis in order for the European Union to approve the Lagardère deal. In all, Lagardère has 27,000 employees spread across 40 countries; it is the third largest trade and education publisher in the world, the first largest in France, and the second largest in the U.K.
Late last year, in a major restructuring, Hachette Livre, the book publishing arm of Lagardère Group, brought together the U.S.-based Hachette Book Group and its U.K.-based counterpart, Hachette UK, under a new English-language management structure.
