Repubblica and La Stampa, sale negotiated: editorial staff in turmoil

The game for the future of Repubblica and La Stampa goes into extra time. The top management of Gedi, according to reconstructions, have signed an agreement with the Greek Theodore Kyriakou to extend the exclusive negotiations by another two months, with the aim of granting the publishing assets of the former Espresso group. The exact perimeter of the operation has not yet been defined.

The previous period of exclusivity with Kyriakou's Antenna Group had ended at the beginning of December, and when it expired, Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, son of Luxottica's founder, stepped in, submitting an offer of around 140 million through his Lmdv to compete with the Greek entrepreneur for Gedi's publishing and radio business. The latter, together with the controlling shareholder Exor, decided to continue negotiations with Antenna, formalising a new exclusive phase to define the details of the operation. According to other rumours, a pre-agreement on the sale has already been reached between the parties, a circumstance that is currently not confirmed.

The Exor holding company, which refers to the Agnelli-Elkann family, has, among other assets, stakes in Stellantis, Ferrari, Juventus, Cnh, Iveco and Philips. In publishing, he also owns a stake in the British business weekly The Economist.

The affair brings with it union repercussions. The Stampa website was not updated until 7am on Thursday 11 and the newspaper is not on the newsstands. The newspaper's journalists are in permanent assembly. This was announced by the editorial board in a note published on the newspaper's website. The assembly of Repubblica journalists will also meet during the day, and in the afternoon a meeting of the editorial boards of La Stampa, Repubblica and La Sentinella with Gedi management is planned. A decision taken', explains the La Stampa editorial board, 'after the publisher announced in recent days its intention to sell all the group's activities, after long months of negotiations that were always denied by the company. With respect to our requests,' notes the Cdr, 'no guarantee has been given on the future of the newspaper, on employment levels, on the solidity of the potential buyer, on the fate of the activities pooled at group level, from digital infrastructure to video production, and therefore no guarantee that we will be able to continue to carry out our work as we have done to date'.