Banijay Group to acquire Endemol

Banijay Group announced that they have signed an agreement to acquire 100% of Endemol Shine Group, a property of The Walt Disney Company and of the funds managed by the subscribers of Apollo Global Management, Inc, for US$2.2 billion.

The acquisition, that is subject to the usual closing conditions, including regulatory authorizations and consulting with the entities that represent employees, will cover Endemol Shine´s 120 production companies with an estimated 66,000 hours of scripted and unscripted programming together with more than 4,300 registered formats.

Once the acquisition is completed, Banijay Group will be positioned as one of the biggest and most powerful production companies in the world, as the owner of almost 200 production companies in 23 territories and will have the rights to almost 100,000 hours of content. The group´s total combined income will be approximately 3 billion euros by the end of this year.

The combined catalog will include some of the most renowned brands and formats, such as Black Mirror, Versailles, Big Brother, MasterChef, Survivor, The Millennium Trilogy, Peaky Blinders, Temptation Island, Wife Swap and The Island.

The acquisition will be financed through a capital increase of Grupo Banijay and the financing of the committed debt, which includes a total committed refinancing of the existing financial debt of Banijay and Endemol Shine, backed by Deutsche Bank, Natixis and Société Générale. After the closing, the combined group will be in the hands of LDH (67.1%) and Vivendi (32.9%).

Marco Bassetti, executive director of Banijay, said: “The combination of the resources of these two companies will instantly strengthen our position in the global market and our capabilities in all the genres will define us even more as a first-rate IP provider worldwide.”

Sophie Turner Laing, executive director of Grupo Endemol Shine, added: “This agreement leads us to an entirely new and exciting chapter and to a new, improved global content home with many opportunities ahead”.