Sir,
For someone as informed and normally accurate as Alec Hogg, the article “Rupert intends settling old score with Bekker” is remarkably devoid of any truth.
Rob Hersov, at the time CEO of Telepui, advised Richemont to sell its stake.
Richemont therefore took the initiative and, subsequent to a bidding war between HughesDirecTV and Canal+, both Richemont and Naspers sold their holdings in Telepui to Canal+. (Rob was very prescient – Telepui finally racked up cumulative cash flow losses in excess of €5,4 Billion – our share would have been in excess of TWO AND A HALF BILLION EUROS …).
As a 30%+ shareholder of Canal+ the former Chairman & CEO of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier then insisted upon injecting an asset (Pathé) into Canal+ for new shares. The goal was to dilute our influence.
In The UK and South Africa that would have been subjected to a shareholder vote, with Vivendi forced to abstain. Not so in France, however!
This led to a big difference of opinion between him and me, which led to him buying us and Naspers out. We were fortunate to get around €68 per share. A year later Vivendi was trading at less than €8 per share.
It is therefore apparent that the “divorce” never occurred as described – we sold out together, and at a very good time and price.
After getting an IRR of 25,1% out of the Pay-TV investment, Richemont used the proceeds to buy the three watch companies, IWC, Jaeger-le-Coultre and Lange & Söhne. It has been a wonderful investment.
Similarly, Naspers invested their proceeds with great success.
Koos is and has been a friend for decades – there is no “story”, no “revenge”.
As for Remgro’s investment into Sabido, after our successful cooperation in Vodacom, Johnny Copelyn and Marcel Golding decided to get into television. We supported their venture as we felt that our children may need a non-governmental free-to-air channel in the future and that Trade Unions are democratic institutions. This has proven to be true. We have no other TV ambitions whatsoever.
It follows that the rest of the story is also fiction.
Johann Rupert
