Vivendi SA has confirmed that it wants to buy the much coveted video-streaming website Dailymotion currently owned by French telecommunications operator Orange SA, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Vivendi, the restructured media group with interests in pay-television and music, gave no detail of the terms of its offer for Dailymotion in a statement on Tuesday which confirmed reports Monday. A Vivendi spokesman declined to provide additional information.
The offer from Vivendi, whose main shareholder is French business tycoon Vincent Bolloré, follows pressure from the French government for a national company to weigh to bid for Dailymotion so that the smallish rival of Google’s Youtube.com stays in French hands after Orange last month opened talks with a Hong Kong-based investor.
A person familiar with the matter said Monday Vivendi had offered 250 million euros ($273 million). The owner of French pay TV group Canal Plus and Universal Music Group wants to develop Dailymotion globally in cooperation with similar services it already controls or has stakes in, such as German movie and television streaming website Watchever or Vevo, according to the person.
Vivendi’s offer comes as the French government for the second time in two years scared a foreign company away from buying a stake in Dailymotion, echoing an incident that has cast a shadow over French startups’ efforts to woo foreign investors. Two years ago Yahoo! approached Orange to buy a controlling stake in Dailymotion but was eventually rebutted after French government’s opposition.
The French government owns a minority stake in Orange.