Silvio Berlusconi’s son wants to keep the family legacy of the late Italian media entrepreneur together and maintains the planned Europe-wide TV alliance with ProSiebenSat.1. “To resist pressure from multinational companies, we have to become bigger. We are not interested in buying a television channel in France or Germany, but we want to create a large European channel”, said Pier Silvio Berlusconi.
The Berlusconis’ family holding company, Fininvest, holds 48.5 percent of the shares in the former television holding company Mediaset, which now operates as MFE-Mediaforeurope. MFE is the largest shareholder with almost 30% of the Bavarian television group ProSiebenSat.1, owner of the Puls4 and ATV channels in Austria. “We are proud that the project of a major European broadcaster is, exceptionally, being promoted by an Italian company and not by a foreign company,” said the 54-year-old businessman.
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European television and advertising platform
“We want to invest more in national productions in Italy, Spain and, hopefully, soon in Germany. But the project is to create a large European content distribution and advertising sales platform, which has the size and technology to take on the Internet giants”, explained Pier Silvio Berlusconi.
After the death of the patriarch and former prime minister in June, there was speculation about a sale of the family’s shares to the second largest shareholder, the French group Vivendi. The Berlusconis have been in dispute with Vivendi since 2016. At that time, an Italian-French television alliance collapsed. Pier Silvio Berlusconi, the eldest of his father’s five children from two marriages, recently said of the relationship with the French that the MFE had “completely normal relations with a silent financial investor”.
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