THE PENTA Investments group allegedly agreed with the German publishing house Rheinisch–Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH (RBVG) on the price to purchase a 50-percent stake in the Slovak publishing house Petit Press, the Czech website motejlek.com informed on September 19.
The sale of the publishing house with its flagship, the Sme daily, can still be blocked by the Prvá slovenská investičná skupina (PSIS) financial group, which has the pre-emptive right to buy the stake and owns the other half of the publishing house’s shares.
“Prvá slovenská investičná spoločnosť has the pre-emptive right to buy the shares and I believe that it will use it,” said the head of Petit Press, Alexej Fulmek, as quoted by the Sme daily. “I can’t confirm that RBVG preliminarily made an agreement with Penta.”
Penta refused to comment on the matter.
“We won’t comment on any speculations about media transactions,” Penta spokesperson Martin Danko said, as quoted by the SITA newswire. “We will comment only on finished trades, as is standard in the case of other projects.”
Penta recently acquired the Trend Holding and Spoločnosť 7 Plus publishers via cooperation with Dutch investment firm V-3 Media Holding, which officially bought both publishing houses. Danko said that the financial group also plans to gradually expand its investment presence in the media in the Czech and Polish markets and actively participate in ongoing ownership consolidation.
(Source: SITA, Sme)
Compiled by Roman Cuprik from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
