Vivendi Sheds Professional Group
By Herbert R. Lottman -- Publishers Weekly, 9/10/2001
Following up on a commitment to divest his group's professional publishing sector to focus on core businesses, Vivendi Universal president Jean-Marie Messier is in the process of selling a roster of technical and trade magazines to the British investment group Cinven. In order to hike the selling price up to two billion euros (about $1.8 billion), which will provide most of the financing needed for the acquisition of Houghton Mifflin, Vivendi is throwing in its medical press -- which ranks number three in the world -- and its trade fair group.
At the same time, Messier has unveiled Universal Music Mobile, the first credible consumer application for cellular phones that will allow subscribers in France to purchase given amounts of listening time.
It is assumed that this early move into next-generation telephony is motivated in part by a need to help everyone forget that Vivendi's all-European portal, Vizzavi, isn't where it was supposed to be by now.
