The share price of RCS, the
publisher of top Italian dailies Corriere della Sera and La
Gazzetta dello Sport, soared by 22%, taking it to 0.55 euro, in
early trading on Monday. The rise comes after media businessman
Urbano Cairo announced after markets closed Friday that he was
making a bid for a controlling stake in the group. Cairo, who
owns Torino soccer club and TV broadcaster La7, said Monday that
he was not launching a hostile takeover, stressing he wanted
existing stakeholders to stay on board. The bid features a
share-swap offer with 0.12 of a share in Cairo Communication
being offered for each RCS share. "It's a market operation, not
a hostile takeover," Cairo said. "We want to keep the old
partners inside so they can benefit with me from the eventual
revenues of RCS once it is re-structured. We have valued RCS at
770 million euros, almost 700 million when you subtract the 90
million for the sale of RCS Libri (books arm) to Mondadori. That
is twice as much as the stock-market capitalisation of (rival)
group Espresso".
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