Prisa ‘assessing new scenario’ after Cofina gives up plan to buy TVI
Prisa has announced that it will take "all measures" to try to force Cofina to acquire Media Capital. The owner of Correio da Manhã gave up the business in the early hours of the morning.
The Spanish owner of Portugal’s Media Capital told Lusa on Wednesday that it is “assessing a new scenario” after Cofina announced that it was giving up its plan to acquire Media Capital’s television broadcaster TVI, having failed to raise sufficient capital to fund the operation.
“We are assessing a new scenario and when there are new developments, we will communicate that,” an official at Prisa, Spain’s largest media conglomerate, told Lusa. “We have no further comments to make on this matter.”
Cofina had earlier informed Portugal’s securities markets regulator, the CMVM, that it was giving up on its plan to buy TVI after a capital increase failed.
The public offering of Cofina shares to generate €85 million to finance the purchase of TVI ended on Wednesday. However, given the “deterioration of market conditions” and that “the condition of full subscription of the capital increase has not been verified, the offer remains ineffective”, a news release from the company reads.
In its preliminary announcement launching the takeover bid, Cofina made clear that the operation depended on a number of prior conditions, including approval by the regulatory authorities and by Prisa shareholders at a general meeting, as well as the approval and successful completion of one or more capital increases by Cofina to finance the purchase of Media Capital.
Cofina owns the Correio da Manhã tabloid and associated TV channel, the Jornal de Notícias newspaper, the Record sports paper and Sábado magazine,
For its part, Media Capital has six television channels – the open-signal generalist channel TVI as well as news channel TVI24, TVI Reality, TVI Fiction, TVI International and TVI Africa – and the TVI Player digital platform. It also has several radio stations, including Portugal’s most popular, Rádio Comercial.
Prisa is Spain’s largest media company, with a presence in 22 countries in Europe and the Americas. It owns, among others, the newspapers El País and Cinco Días.
