By Ruth Bender
PARIS-- Vincent Bolloré called on investors Friday to have faith
in his capacity to turn Vivendi SA into a successful European media
group as the group's chairman and largest shareholder secured
double voting rights, further tightening his grip over the
company.
Mr. Bolloré, presiding over his first annual meeting as
chairman, said giving him larger voting rights will help Vivendi
transform into a global content group, comparing Vivendi to big
tech giants such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., where founders
often have a higher portion of voting rights than the capital they
control.
"These groups are agile, they can move very quickly," Mr.
Bolloré said.
Mr. Bolloré won his bid as a group of minority shareholders
failed in their resolution seeking to overrule a French law giving
shareholders double voting rights for shares held over two
years.
With 14.5% of the capital and soon a much bigger percentage of
voting rights, the French investor holds the key decision power in
crafting Vivendi's future.
But Mr. Bolloré urged investors to be patient as Vivendi is
working toward building a new global content company.
Vivendi has in recent years sold of an array of assets from
telecoms to video games and is now seeking to rebuild itself into a
large European media company. It has over EUR10 billion in cash to
spend.
"Clearly, I strongly believe that Vivendi can develop itself a
lot," said Mr. Bolloré. "Why would I invest 4 billion euros in a
company in which I don't believe?".
Mr. Bolloré has nearly tripled his stake in Vivendi in recent
weeks as he came under fire from some minority shareholders. A U.S.
hedge fund pushed Vivendi to agree to boost returns to shareholders
ahead of the meeting this week. Another group of minority holders
also proposed the resolution to stick with a one-share, one-vote
principle, a motion that threatened to overrule Mr. Bolloré's
access to double voting rights.
The tumult at Vivendi came as the group is standing at a
crossroads in its quest to transform itself from a telecom to
broadcasting conglomerate into pure media company.
Mr. Bolloré said finding the right acquisition targets at the
right price isn't easy in a field courted by many different
players. Vivendi wants to find targets that can create value by
working together with Vivendi's existing activities, namely
Universal Music Group and pay TV Canal Plus.
Vivendi will do more acquisitions in the year to come, he said,
after the company made its first buy under the leadership of Mr.
Bolloré earlier this month when it entered exclusive talks to buy
video-streaming site Dailymotion from Orange SA.
Top Vivendi managers will gather at a strategic meeting May 12
to talk about potential acquisitions, he said. He declined to
provide more details.
Mr. Bolloré remained undeterred by repeated questioning from
shareholders in a three-hour meeting that--despite the recent
shareholder revolt--kept a friendly tone.
"I think you are wrong," Mr. Bolloré said to the shareholder
accusing him of not having a strategy. "But it does occur that I
get things wrong, so the future will tell who was right: you or
I."
Write to Ruth Bender at Ruth.Bender@wsj.com
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