le Parisien again

Are we getting close to a solution for le Parisien? Here, there are two schools of thought.

Some argue that the withdrawal of Dassault whose whole staff apart from Mougeotte, the Figaro editor, was hostile to the takeover, deprives Amaury, the owner, of any possibility to negociate. There remains only one candidate, Groupe Rossel and Capital fund which is not the best way to improve the selling price. In that case, Amaury would pull out and wait for a better opportunity.

Others think that the sale will take place with Rossel anyway because the future of print is not promising, to say the least and le Parisien will be a less valuable asset in five years.

Rossel people are willing to move forward but don't intend to fulfill Amaury's unrealisitc wishes. They consider that the press group is worth at most 120 million euros. They hope to reduce drastically the operating costs of the two dailies, Parisien and Aujourd'hui en France and improve the Website in order of making the whole business very profitable. However, it will be a long and costly process and agreement on printing on Amaury presses is a stumbling block that could derail the negociation.

It is not easy, these days to sell a newspaper.