{"id":297982,"date":"2025-07-28T08:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T08:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/297982\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T08:09:11","slug":"berlusconis-mfe-ups-takeover-offer-for-germanys-prosiebensat-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/297982\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlusconi’s MFE Ups Takeover Offer for Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMFE-MediaForEurope<\/a>, the pan-European TV group controlled by the family of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has upped its offer <\/a>for German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1<\/a>, boosting the share component of its voluntary public takeover bid while maintaining the cash portion. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe revised offer, announced Monday, raises the stock component from 0.4 to 1.3 MFE A shares per ProSiebenSat.1 share, with the cash element remaining at \u20ac4.48 ($5.25) a share. <\/p>\n

\n\tBased on the July 25 closing price of MFE A shares on the Euronext Milan exchange, the updated offer implies a value of \u20ac8.15 ($9.55) per ProSiebenSat.1 share. That represents a 15.8 percent premium over ProSieben\u2019s Xetra closing price of \u20ac7.04 on the same day, and a 24.8 percent premium compared to its March 26 closing price of \u20ac6.53, the day before MFE launched its original bid.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe competing partial acquisition offer from Czech investment group PPF IM Limited remains unchanged at \u20ac7.00 ($8.20) per share in cash. <\/p>\n

\n\tMFE already holds around 30 percent of ProSiebenSat.1, and has framed its takeover as a strategic step toward building a pan-European media company<\/a>. In a recent statement, CEO Pier Silvio Berlusconi emphasized that the revised offer was not a reflection of the inadequacy of the original bid but underscored MFE\u2019s continued support for the German broadcaster and the long-term potential of a consolidated European media group.<\/p>\n

\n\tGermany\u2019s culture minister said on Saturday he had invited Italian media magnate Pier Silvio Berlusconi to a meeting to discuss his company\u2019s bid to buy TV group ProSiebenSat.1, adding the German firm\u2019s journalistic independence must be preserved.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA change of ownership at a media group like ProSiebenSat.1 would be far more than business as usual. The potential takeover would influence the media power structure of our country,\u201d Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer<\/p>\n

\n\tProSiebenSat.1 CEO Bert Habets welcomed the increased offer, calling it a signal of MFE\u2019s commitment to the company. \u201cWe will thoroughly assess the increased offer as well as value creation potentials mentioned in the press release of MFE,\u201d Habets said. He reiterated the company\u2019s openness to pan-European cooperation and confirmed that ProSiebenSat.1\u2019s executive and supervisory boards will issue a formal response after reviewing the amended offer documentation.<\/p>\n

\n\tGermany\u2019s culture minister Wolfram Weimer has invited Berlusconi to Berlin for talks following the summer break to discuss the implications of the potential takeover. \u201cA change in ownership must not lead to a restriction of journalistic independence,\u201d Weimar told Reuters. \u201cMedia power is never neutral \u2013 whoever buys it bears political responsibility.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tMFE already controls Mediaset, Italy\u2019s largest TV broadcaster, and Spain\u2019s No. 1 commercial network Telecinco. With the addition of Pro7, MFE would become the third-largest commercial TV company in Europe, behind\u00a0RTL<\/a>\u00a0(owned by German media giant Bertelsmann) and the U.K.\u2019s ITV. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn contrast with other legacy broadcasters, which are pivoting to streaming to try and compete with global giants like Amazon and Netflix, MFE has doubled down on the free-to-air commercial TV model. Betting that in-country consolidation will be blocked by national regulators \u2014 several attempts<\/a> to merge the No. 1 and No. 2 commercial networks in individual territories have indeed been shot down by anti-trust authorities \u2014 MFE has moved to achieve scale by combining major networks in different countries. <\/p>\n

\n\tMFE estimates that the consolidation of ProSiebenSat.1\u2019s operations with its Italian and Spanish businesses could generate up to \u20ac419 million ($491 million) in additional annual EBIT by the fourth year of implimentaiton, driven primarily by advertising, technology, and data synergies. The group says it will need to make a one-off investment of around \u20ac145 million ($170 million) to realise these efficiencies.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe acceptance period for both the MFE and PPF offers is scheduled to close on August 13, unless extended under German takeover law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MFE-MediaForEurope, the pan-European TV group controlled by the family of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has upped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,110408,110409],"class_list":{"0":"post-297982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-mediaforeurope","12":"tag-prosiebensat-1"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114929845151455218","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}