PARIS — French construction and communications group Bouygues, which controls France’s leading national broadcaster TF1 and has an indirect stake in the Television Par Satellite digital platform, has been caught up in a shareholder spat.
Group chairman Martin Bouygues is looking to undo a five-year shareholder agreement signed this year with entrepreneur Vincent Bollore, under which Bouygues and his brother Olivier pooled their 14.7% stake in the group with Bollore’s 10.2%. The expectation was that Bollore and the Bouygues brothers were to have acted in concert, in the process blocking any third parties from taking a run at Bouygues.
Earlier in the year, observers in Paris speculated that Bollore intended to have a major say in the Bouygues group strategy, including how TF1 is run. Bollore has made his fortune by buying into family-owned businesses and then gradually taking over the show.
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Martin Bouygues has gone to the financial markets council (CMF) claiming that Bollore has not acted as a team player and that the pact should be undone. Bollore has counterattacked by going to a Paris court demanding that the deal is upheld.
Critical voice
Vincent Bollore has been critical of Bouygues management and has come out strongly against the group’s push into the tele-communications sector. He refused to approve company accounts at a recent shareholders meeting, and at a board meeting earlier this month abstained on a vote greenlighting the buyback of 10% of Bouygues Telecom from Cable and Wireless.
The move into mobile telephones is believed to be putting a strain on Bouygues finances, and was given as one of the reasons for closing down the group’s film production, distribution and sales company Ciby 2000.
The CMF is due to hand down a decision on July 22. If it decides that the pact stands, then the Bouygues group could be in for five years of internal fighting between its two leading shareholders.
However, if the pact is broken, Martin Bouygues would be free to look for a different shareholder ally — currently neither Bouygues nor Bollore can pick up more shares without triggering an automatic takeover of the whole group — an operation which would cost around $5 billion.
