Universal Music

""Vincent led this operation with all the cunning of a peasant from the Millevaches plateau, who takes out his beast, shows it at the market, brings it back to the farm, and lets the rumor swell," appreciates this close associate of Bolloré, who knows the region well. Let's judge: in 2007, Vivendi already wanted to sell Universal Music to reduce its debt, and found no one to buy the company, which was nevertheless the world leader, at the proposed price of 7 billion euros; in 2014, with the first encouraging results of streaming, Jean-René Fourtou had received an offer of 13 billion; not expensive enough, Bolloré believes, "Universal can go on its own for 25 billion"; indeed, in 2018, Oddo-BHF bank surprised with an estimate of 20 billion; and, two years later, the sale of the first two 10% tickets of Universal will be based on 30, then 33 billion; before the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, on the day of the listing in September 2021, exploded its valuation to... 45 billion euros. More than the market capitalization of Vivendi, when it still owned this exceptional asset!""

"Today, Vivendi rather talks about the ambition to build a "European Netflix," an alternative to the Californian network that is colonizing the world. "But always focusing our investments towards the south and east, never towards the west," explains a member of the executive board, thus justifying the other masterstroke of 2021 after the takeover of Lagardère: the extraction of Universal Music under fantastic financial conditions."