FRANCE’S billionaire Saade clan has kept business operations under tight family control for more than four decades. The practice is intensifying across the second-generation as scion Rodolphe Saade’s wife takes charge of their rapidly expanding media division.
Veronique Albertini-Saade, 49, will add their biggest-ever media acquisition to her portfolio as head of the family’s communications division. The deal for Altice Media, with a total enterprise value of 1.55 billion euros (S$2.3 billion), is expected to clear regulatory hurdles in coming weeks. It will hand influential French news channel BFM TV and popular radio station RMC to the family that controls the world’s third-largest commercial shipping line, CMA CGM.
The investment underscores how the Saades’ wealth and public profile have grown since the pandemic era, when the firm founded by the late Jacques Saade made record profits and embarked on a buying spree to diversify.
CMA CGM spent about US$14 billion on logistics and terminals over the past four years, and more recently has invested in artificial intelligence.
Rodolphe Saade, 54, who is chief executive officer, and his family have a net worth of about US$40.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires Index.
The clan began snapping up French media assets in 2022, starting with regional newspaper La Provence, which is based in Marseille where the shipping company is headquartered. In rapid-fire succession, CMA CGM acquired stakes in French broadcaster M6 and youth-focused website Brut and then bought La Tribune, a national business newspaper.
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A few months before the Altice Media deal was unveiled, Albertini-Saade took on the role of non-executive chair of Whynot Media, the division overseeing the media assets that has since changed its name to CMA Media. The holdings were valued last month at 130 million euros, according to a filing. That month, Nicolas de Tavernost, the former head of M6, became her deputy.
Adding BFM and RMC will propel the Saades into the major league of French media barons because of their size and broader reach. The Saades will join other French billionaires controlling media outlets such as luxury titan Bernard Arnault, who owns Les Echos newspaper among other titles, and Vincent Bollore, who is building a right-wing group around CNews channel that for the first time surpassed BFM in terms of viewership by one measure last month.
“I want to apply to the media the same thing I applied to transport and logistics,” Saade told France’s audiovisual regulator Arcom on Thursday (Jun 7) at a public hearing about the acquisition. He pledged to invest in the media assets, possibly developing BFM TV abroad.
“I want Altice Media to return to being a leading player in French media,” he said. “I want to make something very good and very strong. I hate being No 2.”
BFM and RMC will be 80 per cent owned by CMA CGM, with the remaining 20 per cent held by the Saades’ family office, Merit France. Albertini-Saade’s role as head of the media business is a further sign of its importance for the clan. She sits on the shipping company’s board alongside her husband, sister-in-law Tanya, 56, and her 82-year-old mother-in-law Naila.
Antitrust scrutiny
The Altice Media deal has drawn scrutiny from France’s antitrust authority as well as Arcom, which called on CMA CGM to adopt an ethics charter and measures to ensure editorial independence of its media holdings.
The May 22 requisite came just months after Saade came under fire for alleged editorial meddling at La Provence. Journalists went on strike amid controversy surrounding coverage of one of President Emmanuel Macron’s visits to Marseille.
“I won’t interfere in the editorial line,” Saade said at Thursday’s hearing. “I can give my guarantee.”
Albertini-Saade has spent most of her career working in the luxury and cosmetics industries, starting at LVMH’s Dior perfumes and then L’Oreal Soon after marrying Saade, she moved to Ponant, the high-end cruise company acquired by Merit in 2004. Merit sold the firm to Bridgepoint in 2012, which sold it to billionaire Francois Pinault’s holding company Artemis in 2015. Albertini-Saade left in 2022.
In an interview earlier this month in Le Monde newspaper, Saade said his “strongest wish” is for CMA CGM to carry on in the hands of the five members of the next generation.
“Some of the children are asking when they can visit the BFM studio,” he was quoted as saying, adding that one of the reasons he acquired Altice Media “was to give the next generation diversification in a profitable sector.” BLOOMBERG
