EU: Vivendi moves against Mediaset’s plan

French media conglomerate Vivendi has taken court action to ensure it can vote against a plan by Italian broadcaster Mediaset to create a pan-European media business, reported Reuters. 

Vivendi has been a hostile Mediaset shareholder since the tycoons who control them, Vincent Bollore and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, fell out in 2016 over an aborted pay-TV deal. They have been in a legal war ever since. 

Mediaset, which considers Vivendi’s stake as illegitimate and bars it from voting, plans to put the Italian broadcaster and its separately-listed Spanish unit under a new Dutch holding company as part of a pan-European growth strategy. 

Publicly declaring its voting intentions for the first time since the June announcement, Vivendi stated on Monday, August 26, that it had petitioned a Milan court to issue an order allowing it to attend and vote at Mediaset’s special shareholders meeting on September 4.

Full Content: Reuters

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