Philippe Wojazer via Archyde.com
MEDIA – “You kicked me out of this establishment”. Xavier Niel is not about to forget his visit to media offices Provence in Marseille. This Wednesday, March 2, when he came to meet employee representatives, he was fired by the group’s CEO in less than ten minutes.
the boss of the mobile operator Freean individual shareholder of Le Monde Group, to which The HuffPost, is an 11% minority shareholder in the Marseille daily through the Avenir Développement holding company. He made the trip at the request of some employees of the newspaper, while others did not want his presence. The tone rose until the intervention of Jean-Christophe Serfati, CEO of Provence who asked him to leave the premises of the daily, as you can see in the video below.
The end of the exchanges took place on the porch of the newspaper’s premises. “You kicked me out of this establishment,” Xavier Niel told the CEO.
“La Provence” coveted by Niel and Saadé
“He doesn’t have to be there,” retorted Jean-Christophe Serfati. “I had informed him by mail that I did not agree with his coming. He still wanted to come and make a passage in force. I let him in, I went to the meeting. He said, ‘you want me to leave’, he was the one who proposed it. At that time I said yes”, explained to BFM Marseille the CEO of Provence.
These deep divisions within the staff are due to the debates around the future buyer of the newspaper. Part of the unions supports the offer of the CEO of CMA-CGM, Rodolphe Saadé, while the other is in favor of Xavier Niel’s offer. They are both trying to get their hands on the 89% stake before held by the Bernard Tapie Group (GBT) and thus become the main shareholder of the newspaper. A CSE must be held this Monday, March 7 in the presence of CMA-CGM representatives, notes BFM Marseille.
But things do not go as planned for Xavier Niel: as recalled The world, on February 15, following the second call for tenders launched by the judicial liquidators of Bernard Tapie’s group, the Bobigny court validated CMA-CGM’s offer as the best bid. The Marseille court meanwhile estimated on February 24 that only the best-priced offer should be presented to employees as part of the legal consultation procedure. The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal is due to examine this aspect on March 28.
“He comes now because he is worried”
But Xavier Niel came to address the employees of Provence. “I did not come to present my offer, I come to meet the employees of Provence. They asked me to explain what I intend to do in the long term”, he nevertheless assured when he arrived at the premises.
According to Mediapart, Jean-Christophe Serfati, who had been warned of this visit, had opposed it by email, arguing that this is equivalent to “violating a court decision”. A warning that Xavie Niel did not take into account. Thus, in the video posted on Facebook by the FO / CGT union of La Provence-Corse Matin, we can see a staff representative say: “You arrive when your offer is excluded from the game”.
“He comes now because he is worried. At the time of the call for tenders, we asked him to present his project to us, he always ignored us” denounced to the World Jean-Paul Frauziol, secretary of the CSE of Eurosud, the subsidiary of La Provence.
See also on The HuffPost: “Helping you communicate, without screwing you up”: Xavier Niel lets loose in the new Free ad