Mecom to bid on Sueddeutscher Verlag
By Leah McBride Mensching, Tuesday 16 October 2007 at 22:13 :: Media Ownership :: #709 :: rss
British publishing giant Mecom is planning to bid on a 62 percent stake in Sueddeutscher Verlag, the Stuttgart-based group that publishes Germany's largest broadsheet daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The deal would value the newspaper group at more than 1 billion euro (£695 million).
David Montgomery, head of Mecom and former chief executive of the Mirror Group, is believed to have appointed Rothschild to advise him on the potential deal, the Australian reported Tuesday. He recently bought a 75 percent stake, for 163 million euro, in the publisher of the Berliner Zeitung, one of Germany's top left-wing newspapers, the Australian reported.
Other groups looking to place bids on Sueddeutscher Verlag include private equity groups Apax, 3i and Providence. Investment bank Credit Suisse is in charge of selling the group, and the first round of bids are expected to be completed by the end of October.
Montgomery launched Mecom in 2000, and has been aggressively expanding across northern Europe over the past two years. He now owns 100 titles in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Denmark, publishing a combined 18 million copies per week.
Mecom is also currently increasing its 58 percent stake in Dutch publisher Wegener to 75 percent, giving the group operational control.
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