French Euronews television channel has confirmed media reports claiming that Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris plans to buy a majority of the channel’s shares.
French Le Figaro newspaper reported earlier that Sawiris is currently negotiating to buy 53 per cent of Euronews shares as part of the channel’s plan to increase its capital by 35 million euros.
A Euronews statement said that: “the channel’s executive board endorsed the decision on Tuesday with a majority of votes.”
23 European public media channels have existing shares in the channel, mainly France TV channel and RAI channel; a model which is expected to change drastically now.
The CEO of Euronews, Michael Peters, said on Wednesday that, “we have been preparing for this step for a few months now… We have to invest in our channel’s contents and in our programmes and in the Euronews brand. But in the light of the financial position of public channels in Europe, having foreign investments in the channel is more likely.”
Euronews channel is a multilingual news channel which employs about 400 journalists from 25 countries. It has an annual budget of 72 million euros.