One year after the acquisition of the Genoese newspaper Il Secolo XIX, which passed (through the company Blue Media) into the hands of the Aponte family that controls the MSC Group, La Repubblica could also soon be taken over by another shipowner.
According to reports in recent days from various journalistic sources, the Exor group of the Agnelli-Elkann family has decided to exit the publishing sector, selling both newspapers and “thus dismantling the activities of the Gedi hub, which is listed with a value of 118 million euros in the holding company’s balance sheet according to the update last June,” as reported by Italia Oggi. The sale of the Turin-based newspaper La Stampa is expected first.
Once the sale of the latter is finalized or initiated, the Agnelli-Elkann family can dedicate itself to the sale of Repubblica, for which the Greek shipowning family Kyriakou (Theodore Kyriakou is president) would be in pole position; they are publishers of the Hellenic TV station Antenna and entrepreneurs in the shipping world with the companies Athenian Sea Carriers Ltd and K Group. On the table, together with the newspaper, the radio assets will also be included, unless there are further offers concerning only the latter or some of the held broadcasters: Deejay, Capital and m2o.
At the moment, the only certain information seems to be that John Elkann no longer believes in publishing as an investment sector for Exor. Prima Comunicazione explains that “the storm of rumors about the possible sale of La Stampa has found a first fixed point in recent hours: Gedi has actually circulated an informational dossier on the Turin-based publication, containing editorial data, economic data, and prospective scenarios, sent to a limited number of Italian publishing groups. Among these is also Nem (Nord Est Multimedia), a publishing company that in 2024 had already acquired five local publications from Gedi in the Triveneto region” (Il Mattino di Padova, La Tribuna di Treviso, La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre, Il Corriere delle Alpi, Il Messaggero Veneto, Il Piccolo and the online publication Nordest Economia). Among the investors, together with Banca Finint, are also the Cattaruzza (Ocean Group) and Samer (Samer Group) families of Trieste, who are also active in the shipping sector.
“Several commentators argue that Elkann is no longer interested in having newspapers in Italy, simply because he no longer needs levers of power with Italian politics, having, in recent years, definitively shifted the industrial and financial center of gravity of Exor abroad, to Amsterdam, to France, to the United States,” writes Prima Comunicazione. “The holding company is today a global player active in automotive, healthcare, luxury, and new technologies, sectors in which the relationship with the Italian government would have lost direct strategic value.”
