Qatar becomes top Lagardere investor

Reuters/Paris

Qatar Holding has raised its stake in Lagardere to over 10%, making the Gulf state the largest shareholder in the struggling French media-to-aerospace conglomerate. Qatar has been a staunch supporter of chief executive Arnaud Lagardere even as some shareholders have assailed the chief executive’s strategy for the company his father founded, which competes with Pearson and Bertelsmann in radio and book publishing. A spokesman for the Qatar Investment Authority declined to comment. Lagardere officials did not return a phone call seeking comment. Lagardere, which also is a top shareholder in Airbus parent Eads, has struggled this year as the company’s fledgling sports business has been plagued by integration problems. The company was twice forced to scale back its annual core profit target, forcing its CEO to defend his decision to pour money into the venture. Activist shareholder Guy Wyser-Pratte, who last year lost a battle to weaken Arnaud Lagardere’s powers at the company, told Reuters that he expected Qatar to support the CEO as it has in the past. Lagardere officials could not be reached for comment on the remarks by Wyser-Pratte, who has been trying to challenge the outcome of an April 2010 shareholder vote rejecting two proposals he made aimed at greater oversight of the company’s governance. AMF said Qatar Holding now owned 13.2mn Lagardere shares, or 10.1% of its capital. Qatar Holding is a unit of the Qatar Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which previously held 9.97mn shares, or 7.6% of Lagardere. The move, which gives the investment vehicle a 7.9% voting rights stake, was carried out through off-market purchases, the regulator said. Wyser-Pratte told Reuters that he had taken a new stake in Lagardere after selling his previous holding after his 2010 defeat, but he declined to quantify the new stake. Lagardere shares rose 2.5% to close at €20.24, but they are still down 36% for the year. Qatar earlier this year was reported to have considered investing in France’s largest bank BNP Paribas. In May another of the country’s funds, Qatar Sports Investments, bought control of famous football club Paris Saint-Germain.IQ sells local real estate stakeIndustries Qatar (IQ) sold its stake in a local real estate firm for $44mn, the Gulf Arab region’s second-largest chemical producer by market value said yesterday, as the property sector faces growing supply. IQ had held a 34% stake in Fereej Real Estate Company, which was set up in 2008 in a joint venture with a Gulf International Services unit and Qatar Real Estate Co (Alaqaria). The latter had 33% stakes each. “In view of the development in the real estate segment, the company has decided to proceed with the liquidation,” IQ said in a filing to the Qatar stock exchange. Gulf International’s Al-Koot Insurance and Reinsurance unit said in a separate filing yesterday that it too had liquidated its position in Fereej. The announcement comes a day after United Development Company (UDC), the developer behind Qatar’s man-made Pearl island project, said it is in talks to issue 80mn new shares to a state pension fund.“Qatar is now seeing signs of stabilisation (in property market). But some companies have got into so much that they can’t get out of it,” said Mostafa El-Maghraby, senior financial analyst at Kuwait-based Global Investment House. The analyst said oversupply in Qatar is not as exaggerated as that seen in Dubai, which suffered a crippling property bust, nor at levels currently being witnessed in Abu Dhabi.