CMA CGM Group has thrown its hat into the ring to buy a French newspaper.
According to French media reports, CMA CGM is offering €81m ($92m) for a controlling 89% stake in La Provence, a daily published in Marseille — the French liner giant’s home city.
CMA CGM’s bid exceeds the newspaper's annual turnover of around $76m and is said to easily exceed the only rival offer submitted by NJJ Presse Sud, a holding controlled by French media entrepreneur Xavier Niel.
On top of the outright acquisition price, CMA CGM chief executive Rodolphe Saade also pledged to invest an additional €35m in order to spruce up the newspaper.
The 89% stake in La Provence, a title with a circulation of about 80,000 copies in 2020 according to Wikipedia, is sold via court proceedings after the death last year of its former owner Bernard Tapie — a controversial French media mogul.
CMA CGM did not immediately respond to a request for comment or to clarify whether the bid comes from the company or personally from Saade, who has been open about wanting to invest in the newspaper.
When quizzed in an interview with French daily Le Monde earlier this month about the reasons for his interest, Saade was quoted as saying: “Don’t look for any complex reasons: I read the paper and I like it. La Provence is on sale, so I went for it.”
An investment in La Province would help safeguard at least 250 jobs at the newspaper. In line with booming profits during the coronavirus pandemic (see graph), big liner companies like CMA CGM have been eager to display more social responsibility amid calls for windfall taxes to be imposed on them.
In a similarly motivated move, CMA CGM invested $30m in ailing compatriot Brittany Ferries last year, to help the shortsea operator recover from its loss of passenger traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic.
From aircraft to Formula 1
Liner giants flush with cash have been making much more substantial investments in areas closer to its core logistics business.
European rival MSC Group expressed in late January an interest to buy Italy’s ITA Airways.
Meanwhile, CMA CGM on 8 December acquired US-based Ingram Micro CLS in a deal that involved an enterprise value of $3bn and which propelled its CEVA Logistics unit to become the world’s fourth-largest global contract logistics provider.
A few weeks later, on 31 January, CMA CGM agreed to buy a 51% stake in Colis Prive, a specialist in home and relay parcel delivery. The deal includes an option for CMA CGM to increase its stake even further.
In another substantial deal completed in January, CMA CGM acquired the 90% stake it did not already own in Fenix Marine Services, the third-largest port in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area.
According to its website, CMA CGM operates more than 500 ships, which call at 420 of the world’s 521 commercial ports.
The company reported bumper net income of $5.6bn alone in the third quarter of 2021 — a multiple of the $567m it earned in the same period of 2020.
Helped by that cash, CMA CGM bought 49 ships on the secondhand market between January and November last year. Its aviation unit CMA CGM Air Cargo, which the company said it will turn into a France-registered freight airline, ordered four Airbus A350F units.
In a smaller but perhaps just as equally high-profile move, CMA CGM signed on 26 January a logistics partnership deal with Scuderia Ferrari, a Formula 1 race team.
