LMDV comes to a halt at *Il Fatto*’s wall: the takeover bid for Seif falls through
Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio has withdrawn his offer following the SEIF board’s refusal to allow an audit of the accounts and the founders’ refusal to sell. The entrepreneur said: “Our door remains open.”
The long-standing shareholders of *Il Fatto Quotidiano* have shut the door; Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio has called off the bid. The much-discussed plan to take over Seif, the company that publishes *Il Fatto Quotidiano*, has been halted before it could be launched. LMDV Media, the publishing vehicle linked to his family office, has taken note of the double rejection: the board of directors is refusing to grant access to the requested information and the founding shareholders have no intention of selling. Without those checks, the group announces in a statement, “it does not, at present, intend to proceed with the bid”.
What is certain is that the phrase ‘as things stand’ seems to leave a nagging doubt, which the entrepreneur himself takes it upon himself to clarify: ‘We have put resources and rules on the table, and we respect the decision of the founding shareholders’. He then adds: “Our door remains open, to *Il Fatto* as well as to any publisher wishing to build a free and sustainable news service.”
The plan announced on 25 October involved a voluntary offer for the entire share capital, aimed at delisting the company from the stock exchange: €0.286 per share, totalling approximately 7.15 million. A price which, according to LMDV, represented a premium of around 30 per cent on the official share price of 23 October. Before committing, however, the prospective buyer requested a confirmatory due diligence review.
The ‘founders’ barrier’ has undermined the project’s basis. The offer would have been conditional upon securing at least 82.9 per cent of the voting capital: the threshold required to override the statutory 17 per cent limit on Seif shareholdings. The founders, who collectively hold the majority of the voting capital, have stated that they do not wish to participate. For the board of directors, which met on 28 October 2026, that condition thus became impossible to meet. Hence the refusal to consider the request.
There is also a second reason. Seif regards Lmdv Media as a competitor and considers it inappropriate to disclose confidential information to it regarding its expertise and digital innovation.
