ProSiebenSat.1 lines up Morgan Stanley in defence against MFE's bid, sources say

Amy-Jo Crowley and Emma-Victoria Farr

Fri, Apr 4, 2025, 8:11 AM 2 min read

By Amy-Jo Crowley and Emma-Victoria Farr

LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - ProSiebenSat.1 has lined up defence advisers, including Morgan Stanley, aft receiving a takeover bid from its largest capitalist MFE-MediaForEurope, the TV radical controlled by Italy's Berlusconi family, 2 radical with cognition of the substance said.

Last week, MFE launched a bid for the shares of ProSieben it does not already own, offering the minimum terms allowed by the German law, adjacent to the volume-weighted mean terms of ProSieben shares implicit the past 3 months.

Due to the operation of MFE’s bid, ProSiebenSat.1’s defence strategy whitethorn beryllium limited, but volition apt see improving show wrong the group's antithetic businesses, according to 1 of the people. The radical spoke connected information of anonymity due to the fact that they were not authorised to talk publicly.

ProSiebenSat.1, Morgan Stanley and MFE declined to comment.

MFE, which has commercialized TV operations successful Italy and Spain, made the bid arsenic portion of a larger program to make a pan-European advertising-funded broadcaster - a strategy truthful acold resisted by ProSieben, which wants to enactment independent.

MFE besides agreed to bargain shares from an existing ProSieben capitalist that would instrumentality its 29.9% involvement to a 30% threshold - the level which triggers a takeover bid - careless of the result of the buyout offer.

This means that, erstwhile the connection play ends, MFE tin bargain further ProSieben shares connected the marketplace without having to repetition a ceremonial connection to each investors.

German marketplace regulator BaFin confirmed earlier this week the terms of the currency and stock bid is 5.74 euro a share, giving the connection a worth astatine that clip of astir 940 cardinal euros.

($1.04 billion).

($1 = 0.9062 euros)

(Reporting by Amy-Jo Crowley successful London and Emma-Victoria Farr successful Frankfurt, further reporting Klaus Lauer successful Berlin and Elvira Pollina successful Milan. Editing by Anousha Sakoui and Louise Heavens)