Vivendi close to selling French publishing business, not Houghton Mifflin
The New York Times reports that Vivendi has agreed to "sell its French publishing business and other non-American assets to Lagardère, the French conglomerate that publishes Elle and Car and Driver magazines, for about $1.2 billion in cash, executives involved in the negotiations said last night."
The decision by Vivendi's board to sell a part of its publishing unit instead of the entire division, which includes the educational publisher Houghton Mifflin, is another setback in Vivendi's effort to pay down its $18.6 billion debt load.
Vivendi decided to sell its French publishing assets like L'Express and other non-American assets separately because bids for the entire publishing unit all came in under $2.9 billion, the executives said, far below the $4 billion the company had anticipated receiving.
...Whatever happens, Vivendi needs cash quickly. Besides paying down its debt, the company must find a way to counter an offer by the Vodafone Group for its stake in Cegetel, the large French phone company. Hoping to take advantage of Vivendi's weak cash position, Vodafone reached an agreement last week to increase its stake in Cegetel to 56 percent by paying 6.3 billion euros ($6.2 billion) in cash for the 26 percent of Cegetel held by the BT Group and the 15 percent owned by SBC Communications.