By Klaus Lauer
(Reuters) -ProSiebenSat.1 Media elected Maria Kyriacou as chairman of its supervisory board on Wednesday, backed by Czech investment group PPF, following her appointment to the board.
The appointment of Kyriacou, a former executive at Paramount Global, Disney and ITV studios comes amid a power struggle between the company’s two largest shareholders, Italy’s MFE-MediaForEurope and Czech investment firm PPF.
Former supervisory board chair Andreas Wiele, who announced in January he would not seek re-election, has consistently criticised MFE’s approach and supported ProSieben’s strategy to remain independent.
MFE, which is controlled by Italy’s Berlusconi family and runs commercial TV operations in Italy and Spain, made a lowball cash and share bid for ProSieben in March as part of a push to create a pan-European broadcaster.
MFE is considering, among other things, a joint streaming platform to better compete with U.S. giant Netflix. It is also pushing for an accelerated sale of ProSiebenSat.1’s online holdings to reduce the debt burden and generate cash.
PPF, whose 14.94% stake makes it ProSieben’s second-biggest shareholder after MFE with 30.14%, prefers to wait in order to gain more from holdings such as the cosmetics online retailer Flaconi or the dating platform Meet Group – “at reasonable prices”, as a PPF representative said.
(Reporting by Klaus Lauer in Berlin, Bernadette Hogg and Isabel Demetz, Editing by Rachel More, Kirsten Donovan)
