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France’s Rodolphe Saadé, the billionaire head of the world’s third-largest shipping company, is seeking to expand his media business by buying an influential news group.
The Franco-Lebanese chairman of Marseilles-based CMA CGM has agreed to acquire Altice Media — with its iconic BFM TV news channel and RMC radio station — from telecoms group Altice for around €1.5 billion, according to a statement Friday by the two companies.
“With this planned acquisition, we have the ambition to continue our long-term development in the media industry,” said Saadé.
Soaring freight rates and low taxes on shipping mean that CMA CGM is swimming in cash. Between 2020 and 2023, the group raked in €45 billion in profit, convincing the family-owned company to diversify into media.
Saadé snapped up business newspaper La Tribune last year and Marseille paper La Provence in 2022. He also holds a 10 percent stake in television channel M6, the country’s second-biggest private broadcaster.
Critics warn this could threaten the impartiality of the press and undermine the foundations of French democracy. Many of the country’s richest people already oversee powerful newsrooms. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault owns Les Echos and Le Parisien, telecoms mogul Xavier Niel has Le Monde, and logistics magnate Vincent Bolloré runs CNews and Journal du Dimanche.
The sale “which will be subject to the usual preconditions and the obtaining of applicable regulatory authorizations, should be finalized during the summer of 2024,” according to Altice Media.
