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Havas CEO says no merger talks underway with Vivendi

June 23, 2016 at 10:13 am EDT

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Havas (>> HAVAS) Chief Executive Officer Yannick Bollore said on Thursday that there were no merger talks ongoing between his advertising company and Vivendi (>> Vivendi), the French media giant chaired by his billionaire father.

Vincent Bollore, who took the helm of Vivendi in 2014, last month evoked the possibility of a tie-up between the two companies.

The French tycoon owns about 60 percent of Havas and about 15 percent of Vivendi via his family-controlled group. He recently tightened his grip on the media company by nominating his son Yannick to the board.

"There's no official discussion between the two companies," the Havas chief executive said in an interview in Cannes.

However, the CEO of the world's sixth-largest advertising company did not rule out the possibility of building closer ties with Vivendi in the future.

"Havas and Vivendi have two things in common: first, a common shareholder; second, the fact that we evolve in similar environments, with what's going on in the digital revolution and with big data," Yannick Bollore said.

Bollore also said that there would be no change to the outlook for the advertising business if Britons voted on Thursday to leave the European Union.

(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Richard Lough and Geert De Clercq)

By Mathieu Rosemain

Stocks treated in this article : HAVAS, Vivendi, Bolloré

Vincent Marie Claude Bolloré

Vincent Bolloré (born 1952) is a French industrialist, corporate raider and businessman. He serves as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of investment group Bolloré.

Biography
Early life
Vincent Bolloré was born on 1 April 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt. He attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly before graduating with a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from Université Paris X Nanterre.

Career
He started his career as an investment bank trainee at Edmond de Rothschild.

His personal investment career began when he took over the reins at his family-controlled conglomerate Bolloré, which deals in maritime freight and African trade, and paper manufacturing (cigarette and bible paper). The company he leads today employs 33,000 people around the world. He is a well-known corporate raider in France who has succeeded in making money by taking large stakes in French listed companies, in particular the building and construction group Bouygues, where he left with a sizeable capital gain after a power-struggle.

In late 2004, his investment group started building a stake in advertising group Havas, becoming its largest single shareholder. He mounted a coup and replaced Alain de Pouzilhac as Havas Chief Executive Officer on 12 July 2005. In 2005, through his family company, he expanded his media interests by launching the Direct 8 television station. Towards the end of 2005, he began building a stake in independent British media planning and buying group, Aegis. As of 19 July 2006, his stake in Aegis stood at 29%. Direct Soir, a free newspaper, was launched in June 2006. In January 2008, he manifested interest in becoming a shareholder of famed, but troubled, Italian car manufacturer Pininfarina.
The Bolloré Group also has important positions in the economies of several former French colonies in Africa (in particular Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, and Congo).

Personal Life
He is married, with four children. He is ranked 329th richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated fortune of US$4 billion.

Vincent Bolloré is engaged with the French supermodel Vanessa Modely, égérie of Christian Dior and Karl Lagerfeld.

He is a close personal friend of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It has been said that their friendship goes back over 20 years. Sarkozy has been criticized for accepting vacations from Bolloré, as did president Georges Pompidou with Vincent's father, Michel Bolloré. They have both claimed that no conflict of interest exists.

Source @ Wikipedia

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