La Tribune newspaper to be bought by shipowner CMA CGM

The economics newspaper La Tribune is due to be taken over by the French shipowner CMA CGM, headed by billionaire Rodolphe Saade. In a press release issued this Friday, the group must first consult “staff representative bodies” and obtain “regulatory approvals” to acquire “100% of the capital of the HIMA group, owner of La Tribune newspaper.”

23 billion euros 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,” assured the group, which recorded a record net profit of more than 23 billion euros in 2022. Having become the owner of the press group La Provence in October, which publishes the daily newspapers La Provence and Corse Matin, the shipowner invited himself to the capital of the audiovisual group M 6, then, in early April, to the capital of the Internet video media Brut.

As a sign of its ambitions in the sector, CMA CGM hired Laurent Guimier, former chief information officer of France Télévisions, to head its CMA CGM Media division in early March. The focus is on “complementarity” between its various media, which the group believes is “at the core” of its strategy in the sector. “La Tribune complements La Provence and Corse Matin (…) in particular through its expertise in digital transformation.”

Created in 1985, La Tribune retired its daily print edition in 2012. Since then, the economics paper has moved almost exclusively to digital: in the paper version, it switched from weekly to monthly in 2020 and now claims three million unique monthly publications. visitors to his site. The newspaper is 72% owned by the HIMA group, 20% owned by entrepreneur Jean-Christophe Tortora and 80% owned by Franck Julien, boss of business services giant Atalian. The rest belongs to entrepreneur Laurent Alexandre (founder of Doctissimo).