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The head of Europe’s largest media company wants to revive an aborted merger between French broadcasters M6 and TF1, as the bloc’s regulators consider taking a less stringent approach to corporate consolidation.
Thomas Rabe, chief executive of German conglomerate Bertelsmann, told the Financial Times he hoped to revisit his plan to merge France’s two biggest privately owned broadcasters, which was abandoned in 2022 as a result of stiff regulatory opposition.
Rabe said a tie-up between Bertelsmann-owned M6 and its larger rival TF1, owned by French conglomerate Bouygues, would be “highly” synergistic.
“It would create a true French TV and streaming champion, able to compete with the US platforms,” he said, referring to streaming services including Netflix and Apple TV+.
The two companies had combined revenues of €3.7bn in 2024, and a combined market capitalisation of €3.6bn.
Bouygues said on Thursday that it shared Rabe’s view that a combination of TF1 and M6 still had merit. “We can see putting such a project back on the table when the legal and regulatory conditions permit it,” it said.
In 2022, Bertelsmann and Bouygues argued that regulators should expand their definition of the TV and advertising markets, as part of their efforts to gain approval for the merger. They wanted US streaming services to be deemed direct competitors to traditional broadcasters.
France’s competition authority acknowledged the threat posed by streamers, but argued that television remained “a very powerful medium”.
The regulator found that the deal could create “major competitive risks” in the TV advertising market and said the combined company would need to sell one of its main channels to win approval. That stipulation ultimately killed the deal.
Rabe said he has since been encouraged by a change in mindset in Brussels after what he described as years of excessively stringent competition rules.
“We’ve been the victims of these rules more than once . . . we have tried to create European champions in media and we were blocked by the regulators — I believe for no good reason,” he said. “Now the European Commission talks about the necessity to reform and promote European champions. Fantastic. Let’s do it.”
In his report on EU competitiveness last year, Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, called on regulators to approve mergers that would drive innovation and boost economic growth.
Teresa Ribera, the new EU competition commissioner, has since been tasked with examining whether regulations are “fit for the new realities” of global competition.
Rabe said he would be willing to revisit the TF1-M6 merger “as soon as regulators indicate they are willing to take a more open-minded approach”.
The chief executive of Bertelsmann, which also owns broadcaster RTL and publisher Penguin Random House, hopes that will come within two to three years.
M6 may attract interest from other suitors, including billionaire Rodolphe Saadé, who already owns a 10 per cent stake. A deal with Saadé would not face the same level of regulatory scrutiny as a tie-up with TF1.
