Italian broadcaster Mediaset announced that its shareholders approved the company’s plan to set up a pan-European media group under a Netherlands-based holding company called Media for Europe (MFE) at an extraordinary meeting held in Milan. The corporate overhaul, strongly opposed by shareholder Vivendi, will result in the merger of Mediaset SpA and Mediaset Spain into the Dutch company, with Mediaset shareholders receiving one MFE ordinary share for each Mediaset share owned. The plan is to list MFE in Milan and Madrid later this year.
MFE will control 100 percent of Mediaset SpA and Mediaset Spain as well as the recently acquired 9.6 percent stake in German broadcaster ProSiebenSat1, resulting in a combined audience of around 107 million viewers. Mediaset previously announced that it hopes to use MFE as a platform for continental alliances with other broadcasters, ultimately creating a streaming service to compete with US majors such as Netflix, Disney, Apple and HBO.
However, the plan may still be scuppered by legal action from Mediaset’s second biggest shareholder Vivendi, which owns around 29 percent of the broadcaster and voted against the merger via its 9.6 percent direct stake. Mediaset's decision to ban Vivendi from using the 19.1 percent of its holding held in the independent Simon Fiduciaria trust during the meeting prompted the French media giant to issue a statement describing the vote as “deplorable” and “unlawful”.
It said the new governance structure is designed to favour Mediaset’s biggest shareholder, the Fininvest investment vehicle of the Berlusconi family, and pledged to take court action against the broadcaster's move. “Vivendi will use any legal recourse in all relevant jurisdictions and countries to challenge the legality of the proposed new structure, both under national and European laws,” it confirmed.
Vivendi was required to transfer 19.19 percent of its stake in Mediaset into an independent trust back in April 2018 with a view to complying with Italian antitrust regulations.
