Cofina shares soar by 10% after takeover of Media Capital

The Portuguese media conglomerate Cofina has successfully bid to takeover its rival Media Capital.

The markets reacted by seeing shares in Cofina soaring 10% at the start of business on Monday.
The company, which has Portugal’s biggest selling tabloid daily newspaper and running news channel Correia da Manhã TV is the third company to attempt a Public Acquisition Offer for the company which owns popular TV channel TVI.
The two previous failed takeover bids had been from Ongoing and telecoms giant Altice Portugal.
The purchase operation is said to be valued at €225 million which includes €180 million for the company and taking on Media Capital’s €75 million debt.
Should the PAO be accepted by Portugal’s competition and monopolies authority, Cofina will own all the other assets belonging to Media Capital including a number of radio stations.
Media Capital is currently held by the international Spanish media group Prisa which has a footprint in Latin America as well as Spain.
Cofina says it intends to maintain the editorial line that the different media platforms currently have although it cannot rule out job losses as a result of the merger.
Its strategy is to intensify content creation and its role as a content exporter with a view to also providing Netflix states the company.
Media Capital owns TVI, TVI24, TVI Internacional, TVI Ficção, TVI Africa and TVI Reality which are transmitted all over Portugal and its territories via Digital Terrestrial Television.
For many years TVI led the audience wars in Portugal until this year its position of preeminence was supplanted by its rival SIC owned by media group Impresa.