A twist in the sale of Marianne: put off by press articles claiming that the billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin had links with the RN, the editorial staff finally rejected this buyer and went on strike.
“What appeared to be an individual ideological commitment turns out to be a partisan enterprise”the Society of Marianne Editors (SRM) said in a press release on Thursday, June 27. The editorial staff therefore “pronounced unanimously (…) against the takeover of the magazine by Pierre-Édouard Stérin”reversing a previous vote on June 21.
She asked the current shareholder, billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s CMI group, to “to seek new buyers capable of ensuring the editorial independence of Marianne and the economic sustainability of the title”.
Continuous strike
Then, “for lack of response”employees voted in the evening, 80%, in favor of a 24-hour renewable strike, which begins Friday morning.
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This spectacular about-face comes the day after an article in Monde titled “Versailles connection: how billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin places his pawns at the RN”.
In this investigation, the daily argues that several candidates in the LR legislative elections favorable to the alliance with the RN come from the « galaxy Stérin ». They are notably linked to the Common Good Fund, the philanthropic enterprise of the 50-year-old billionaire, who is at the head of the Otium Capital investment fund.
Le Monde also cites another article from the magazine Challengesaccording to which Pierre-Édouard Stérin and Otium’s number 2, François Durvye, bought the Le Pen family property in Rueil-Malmaison near Paris in November, via a real estate company (SCI).
According to Challenges, this property, where FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen still lives, was sold for 2.5 million euros.
Conservative Catholic
“The latest information brought to our attention concerning Pierre-Édouard Stérin makes the guarantees of independence obtained by the editorial staff insufficient to exercise our profession with serenity”argued the SRM. According to it, “the nature of the takeover offer is definitively altered”.
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On June 21, the editorial team decided by 60.3% not to oppose the repurchase of the title by Pierre-Édouard Stérin. The owner of Marianne, Daniel Kretinsky’s CMI group, has been in exclusive negotiations since May with Pierre-Édouard Stérin for this sale.
During this first vote, the editorial team believed that it had made progress on “guarantees of independence” proposed by Pierre-Édouard Stérin, a conservative Catholic billionaire and liberal on the economic level.
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In Pierre-Édouard Stérin’s project, former minister and entrepreneur Arnaud Montebourg was expected to chair the weekly’s future board of directors. Its sovereignist left profile seemed to correspond to the editorial line of Marianne, whose editorial director is Natacha Polony.
Challenger
The editorial team wishes to maintain the very distinct editorial line of this weekly created in 1997 by journalists Jean-François Kahn and Maurice Szafran: sovereignism, secularism, criticism of elites. “We will speak with the editorial staff”we indicated at CMI France in the afternoon.
In parallel with the exclusive negotiations with Pierre-Édouard Stérin, a challenger has made another takeover offer for Marianne: the entrepreneur Jean-Martial Lefranc, 62, who made a career in video games and took over the youth press group Fleurus in 2009.
The amount of this offer (five million euros) is however considered insufficient to buy back and turn around Marianne, internal sources explained.
