1.2 History

The original purpose of Lagardère SCA, named MMB up to the end of 1992, and subsequently Lagardère group until June 1996, was to unite all media sector assets held by the Matra group in 1982 prior to the French State’s acquisition of an interest in Matra’s capital, so that the State would not be in a position of control.
Under the initiative and management of Jean-Luc Lagardère, the Company then took control of Hachette, followed by Matra, which returned to the private sector in early 1988.
At the end of 1992, the activities of these two companies were combined when their two holding companies were merged to form Matra Hachette. At the same time, the Company changed its legal form and became a French partnership limited by shares.
The restructuring process was completed in June 1996, when Lagardère group absorbed Matra Hachette, and adopted its current name of Lagardère SCA.
Since then and to date, the following changes have taken place in the Group’s structure:

  • Major alliances and investments in the Defence and Space industries: this European alliance strategy was initiated in the early 1990s, and underwent an important development in 1999 when Aerospatiale Matra was formed through the contribution of Matra Hautes Technologies – which held all of Lagardère SCA’s aerospace operations – to Aerospatiale. The process was completed on 10 July 2000 when all of Aerospatiale Matra’s businesses were merged with those of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG and Spanish company CASA to form the European company EADS NV (renamed Airbus Group NV on 2 January 2014 and Airbus Group SE following transformation of the European company on 27 May 2015), in which Lagardère SCA indirectly held an interest of approximately 15%.
    • This interest was reduced to 7.5% in 2009 following the sale of three 2.5% tranches of EADS’ capital in June 2007, June 2008 and March 2009. Following a series of transactions carried out in concert with the other joint shareholders, on 12 April 2013 Lagardère sold its entire interest for €2,283 million (€37.35 per share) by means of private placements through accelerated bookbuilding with qualified investors. The Lagardère group no longer owns any interest in Airbus Group SE.
  • Repositioning and streamlining in the media and communication industries, by means of:
    • a takeover of businesses in these two sectors, with the bid for Europe 1 Communication (Audiovisual business) in 1999, and the share exchange offer for Hachette Filipacchi Médias (Magazine Publishing business) in 2000, followed by an offer to purchase all of the remaining minority interests;
    • several agreements signed, essentially in the audiovisual sector (acquisition of a 34% interest in CanalSatellite, replaced in early 2007 by a 20% interest in the pay television operator Canal+ France and the sale of this interest to the Vivendi group on 5 November 2013);
    • the combination of the Magazine Publishing, Audiovisual and Digital businesses within a new entity, Lagardère Active, was completed in 2006. This division was formed as a result of the Group’s ambition to become a leading international content publisher for all media as well as a worldwide “brand factory”, and to accelerate its migration towards digital media.
      In line with this goal, Lagardère Active acquired Newsweb and Doctissimo, France’s top online content publishers;
    • From 2010, in an effort to boost its growth and profitability, Lagardère Active began to streamline and rationalise its activities.
      The process notably involved:
      • sale of the International Magazine Publishing business to Hearst in 2011 (102 publications in 15 countries),
      • sale of its Radio business in Russia in December 2011,
      • sale of 10 French Magazine Publishing titles in July 2014;

  • The development of the Book Publishing business, with regular investments in attractive markets such as France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, the acquisition in 2002-2004 of Vivendi Universal Publishing’s European assets in France and Spain, the purchase of Hodder Headline in the United Kingdom, and agreements in 2006 for the takeover of Time Warner Book Group and in April 2016 for the acquisition of Perseus Books Group; It has grown from 11th position in the world to become the 3rd largest publisher.

  • Creation of a Sports division, first named Lagardère Unlimited and later Lagardère Sports and Entertainment:
    • through the acquisition of:
      • Sportfive (early 2007), which acts as a partner to sporting bodies and clubs, helping them to extract maximum value from their broadcasting and marketing rights,
      • IEC in Sports (2007), a Swedish company specialised in the marketing of sports rights,
      • World Sport Group, which manages audiovisual broadcasting rights in Asia; Upsolut, which organises endurance sports events; and PR Event, the organiser of the Swedish Open Tennis tournament (all in 2008); and
    • the combination in 2010 of all of the Sports division entities with the Best group (Blue Entertainment Sports Television), acquired in 2010, within the Lagardère Sports and Entertainment division. This gives Lagardère Sports and Entertainment strategic positioning along the entire sports rights value chain, comprising:
      • marketing, sponsorship and brand partnerships,
      • content creation, media rights, production and distribution,
      • brand consulting, activation and digital services,
      • stadium and arena management solutions,
      • athlete management,
      • event management,
      • live shows and production,
      • venue management.

  • Development of the Lagardère Travel Retail division: the weight of the Travel Retail business has increased through organic growth and major acquisitions.
    Examples of some important transactions include: the acquisition of ADR Retail Srl (since renamed Lagardère Services Travel Retail Roma), an operator of 13 duty free/duty paid stores in two airports in Rome, in September 2012 by Lagardère Services Travel Retail; the acquisition of an operator of retail stores in Amsterdam Schiphol airport, the Netherlands, in January 2014 by Aelia SAS (since renamed Lagardère Duty Free), a subsidiary of Lagardère Travel Retail; the formation of a partnership between Lagardère Travel Retail and a company operating over 200 points of sale in 11 countries, including Venice and Treviso airports, in April 2014; the acquisition of Paradies, a leader in airport travel retail in North America with long-term concessions in more than 76 airports, in October 2015; the acquisition of Hojeij Branded Foods, a leader in Foodservice in the Travel Retail market in North America, in November 2018; and the acquisition in September 2019 of International Duty Free, Belgium’s leading Travel Retail operator.
    Travel Retail has also completed the disposal of its Distribution business with the sales of its magazine distribution activities in the United States (Curtis, June 2015), and its Press Distribution businesses in Switzerland (February 2015), Spain (October 2015), Belgium (November 2016), and, lastly, Hungary (February 2017).
  • Under the impetus of Arnaud Lagardère, General and Managing Partner, the Group launched a strategic refocusing around two priority divisions in 2018, with the aim of making each the global leader in its sector:
    •  Lagardère Publishing;
    • Lagardère Travel Retail.

The main objective of this strategic refocusing was to improve the Group’s industrial profile, making it simpler, more ambitious and streamlined, and to improve cash generation in order to fund the growth of the Group’s two priority divisions.
To achieve this objective, from 2018 to 2020 the Group divested Lagardère Active assets, with the exception of Lagardère News (Paris Match, Le Journal du Dimanche, Europe 1, Virgin Radio, RFM and advertising brokerage businesses and the Elle licence) as well as Lagardère Sports (except for the activities of Lagardère Live Entertainment).