The business newspaper La Tribune should soon come under the bosom of the French shipowner CMA CGM, led by billionaire Rodolphe Saadé. In a statement published on Friday, the group must first consult the "employee representative bodies" and obtain "regulatory authorizations" to acquire "100% of the capital of the HIMA Group, owner of the newspaper La Tribune".
€23 billion in net profit in 2022, a record
"CMA CGM intends to be a decisive player in terms of innovation and transformation of the media sector," said the group, which recorded a record net profit of more than €2022 billion in 23. In October, the shipowner became the owner of the press group La Provence, which publishes the daily newspapers La Provence and Corse Matin, then invited himself to the capital of the audiovisual group M 6, then, at the beginning of April, to that of the online video media Brut.
As a sign of its ambitions in the sector, CMA CGM recruited Laurent Guimier, former news director of France Télévisions, at the beginning of March to lead its media division, CMA CGM Media. The focus is on the "complementarity" between its various media, which is, according to the group, "at the heart" of its strategy in the sector. "La Tribune is complementary with La Provence and Corse Matin (...) especially for its expertise in digital transformation."
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Created in 1985, La Tribune abandoned its daily print format in 2012. Since then, the business newspaper has almost exclusively turned to digital: in paper version, it has gone from a weekly to monthly periodicity in 2020, and now claims three million monthly unique visitors to its site. The newspaper is 72% owned by the HIMA group, itself 20% owned by entrepreneur Jean-Christophe Tortora and 80% by Franck Julien, boss of the business services giant Atalian. The rest belongs to the entrepreneur Laurent Alexandre (founder of Doctissimo).