As Vincent Bolloré the day before, the LVMH CEO and Senior Shareholder, Bernard Arnault, tried to minimize his importance in the media sector.
Le Monde with AFP
from Thursday, January 20th in front of the Senate present his press and media group as a disinterested activity of “sponsorship”, the leader of luxury, Bernard Arnault, one of the richest men in the world, held to Demonstable by asserting wanting to keep an editorial line to which it “adheres”.
After Vincent Bolloré on Wednesday, the Senate Survey Board, which must shed light on the consequences of increasing concentration in the media, is beginning to get used to seeing the most powerful industry in the sector trying to minimize their Importance.
“You invited me to talk about a subject, the media and their capital status. This subject is quite marginal for the group I head,” began Bernard Arnault, CEO and the main shareholder of the multinational LVMH.
The businessman who invested in 1993 in the 1993 (sold in 2007) and now leader of the economic press (the Echos, investing, stockier.com), owner of the Parisian, the monthly knowledge of the arts, Classic radio and Mezzo chain, or a total of 644 press cards, devotes “shortly” to this activity that it “rather rather from the sponsorship”.
Faced with the digital giants, “the sustainability of the traditional titles we are talking about today is far from being done at the end,” he explained, and according to him, “she would be even less so if these Media did not have powerful shareholders. “
” Useful in the future of the media “
Moreover, the titles he controls “were most often proposed to the group by their owners who wanted to get rid of it,” he said.
These titles are “Fleurons”, “irreplaceable” in their fields (economy, daily life, arts), affirmed the billionaire: “That is why the LVMH group has accepted from time to time to consinteel such or such a title “, leaves to assume” substantial losses “.
“I think the shareholders today are very useful in the future of the media they owe (…). We try to turn them into the digital world, to compete with the American media, that requires Many ways, “he said.
But this effort so disinterested?, asked senators. And does not LVMH not actively seek to acquire new media, to enlarge its influence?
Bernard Arnault then switched to deny all the press information saying him interested in the purchase of new titles.
No He has “never made offer” on Figaro, “he said” under oath “. No, he did not study the acquisition of M6, nor that of the Journal du Sunday or Paris Match, nor that of the magazines of the Lagardère group in which he came to support Arnaud Lagardère, who preferred him Vincent Bolloré.
“In general, as well as before my shareholders, I do not give my projects,” he said, however, before the senators.
Cut advertising
Bernard Arnault assumed to have intervened to cut the released advertisement, guilty of a “one” that had displeased him: “I complained, I called the director saying,” It’s amazing to treat French companies and their leaders this way “”.
In France, “the freedom of the press is assured” and is not in danger to future operations, for example the TF1-M6 fusion, “he judges.
Two things seem to avoid: discrimination of press aid according to the shareholder (“or press aids and it must be a little ecumenical or we do not do it at all” ), and additional regulations to protect the independence of writing.
“I do not want to finance a newspaper who becomes the support of the extreme right or the extreme left. And if there is absolute and total independence, we never know”, A- He argued, while the Commission wonders in particular on the right-hand drift of the CNEWS info chain (Canal +), controlled by Vincent Bolloré.
For Bernard Arnault, “It is necessary that the shareholder can react at one time or another. If the echos had to defend the Marxist economy tomorrow, I would still be extremely embarrassed. Need to there are safeguards. “