Gaul merger is 'Totally' cool
Production houses Tele Images, Marathon run off together
The group will dwarf most of its rivals in a market dominated by small- or medium-sized players.
The group sets out with a catalogue of 5,000 hours of programming, growing at the rate of 300 hours a year.
And it is destined to become even bigger, following a planned flotation on the stock market in 12 to 18 months time.
Investor Bridgepoint, the U.K. pension fund that owns Tele Images, has been keen to expand its French interests for some time.
Its search led it to Marathon, whose co-founder Olivier Bremond was looking to sell his 66% stake and move to his wife's native Iceland.
But what began as a planned acquisition of Marathon shifted direction. And last week Tele Images founder and CEO Simone Halberstadt Harari, one of French TV's key players, found herself sidelined as the new CEO post went to Marathon's other co-founder Pascal Breton.
Both Tele Images and Marathon are flagship French companies with comparable revenues of $60 million annually from an array of production genres that sell relatively well on the international market.
Marathon has had the upper hand of late, thanks to shows like the hit animation series "Totally Spies" and "Dolmen," its first foray into primetime drama that drew massive audiences this summer for leading commercial broadcaster TF1.
"Fort Boyard" format producer Adventure Line Productions, owned 60% by Bridgepoint's Gallic holding company Finhera, will also be a part of the new entity.
Breton said last week that Marathon had entered into exclusive negotiations with Bridgepoint with a view to concluding the deal by the end of this year.
He will have a stake in the new company, while Vincent Chalvon-Demersay and David Michel will continue to hold stakes in Marathon's 60%-owned animation subsid.
Exactly how the production units will fit together has still to be worked out, Breton says. They will probably find themselves under one roof -- Breton is shopping around for a suitable space -- but they will have a fair amount of autonomy including separate distribution ops, where those already exist.
"TV is a people business and we would lose more than we'd gain by too much integration," Breton says. "But we want to reinvigorate the whole, creatively and commercially."
Upping exports is one of the new topper's objectives.
"There are lots of obstacles but at Marathon we've proved that a French company can create international brands," he says.
The company's long running soap "St Tropez" has sold to 120 countries around the world, while "Totally Spies" is a hit in major territories including the U.S.
Despite the impending upheavals, international TV folk haven't seen the last of Gallic TV industry vet Halberstadt Harari. Still at her desk at Tele Images last week, she says that she intends to start afresh in the production biz.
"When you are an entrepreneur you begin a new venture," she says, "but this time I'll be the shareholder."
