On Saturday, September 23, NJJ Presse, French businessman Xavier Niel's personal holding company, announced that it had taken over Daniel Kretinsky's shares in Le Monde Group, with the unanimous agreement of the Pôle d'indépendance (Independence Pole). He will transfer them, along with those he already holds, to the Fonds pour l'indépendance de la presse (Fund for Press Independence). This endowment fund, whose shares will henceforth be non-transferable, will thus become our group's largest shareholder. At the same time, French investment banker Matthieu Pigasse has announced that his shares in our group will also be transferred to the Fund for Press Independence. Following these transactions, the group's two main shareholders will therefore be the Fund for Press Independence (whose board of directors is chaired by Alain Frachon, former Le Monde editorial director) and the Independence Pole, mainly composed of journalist and staff associations of our group's various publications (Le Monde, Télérama, Courrier International, La Vie).
These announcements represent two important milestones for our group's governance and for safeguarding the independence of our editorial teams. Kretinsky's withdrawal from our capital puts an end to a chapter that began in 2018, with his investment in Pigasse's company Le Nouveau Monde. Unsolicited, his arrival sparked an immediate and exceptional response from our community and our readers to the threat that it could pose to the balance of our ownership and the identity of our publications. This led to the creation of a statutory right of approval for the sole benefit of the Independence Pole, in the form of a vote prior to any significant change in our ownership.
Since then, neither Kretinsky nor his teams have taken part in defining or implementing our strategy. Nor has Kretinsky sought approval from the Independence Pole. His withdrawal once and for all clarifies the situation within our company's capital.
Complete independence
The involvement of our group's teams, and that of our readers, was essential during this time and led the Independence Pole, the management board and Niel to reflect on the changes needed to further protect our editorial freedom. These discussions led to the creation of the Fund for Press Independence.
Since 2018, our group has thus pursued our development: in complete independence, with an acceleration in the transformation of our business model and a series of editorial developments that have enabled the readership of each of our publications to grow. An example is Le Monde's digital subscriptions portfolio, which went from 173,000 subscribers in 2018 to 503,000 in September 2023.
The announcement of the transfer of Pigasse's shares will also strengthen the influence of the Fund for Press Independence. This initiative, which we applaud, is the culmination of Pigasse's considerable personal investment in supporting and accelerating the transformation of our business model. Initiator of the project with Pierre Bergé and Niel, he was instrumental in rescuing our group and recapitalizing Le Monde Libre in 2010. Pigasse has been a member of our supervisory board ever since. At every stage of our development, from the introduction of our code of ethics to the signing of the agreement granting approval to the Independence Pole, Pigasse has made major contributions to the growth of our group. We would like to thank him warmly on behalf of our group.
Following these changes, and at the end of a dispute with Bergé's heir, our group's capital should be divided between the Fund for Press Independence, a foundation created to support the freedom and quality of information in our democracy, which could hold 72.5% of the group's capital, and the Independence Pole (25.4 %). At a time when many media outlets are seeing their economic stability threatened, their expertise shaken or their identity attacked, our group's evolution demonstrates that the entry of private shareholders into a publication's capital can also lead to a strengthening of editorial rights and freedoms, thanks to the oversight of its staff associations and the support of its readers.
In contrast to recent and worrying developments seen elsewhere, a number of protective tools and mechanisms have been put in place in recent years, with the support of our shareholders. They include the signing of a code of ethics and professional conduct, the creation of an ethics committee gradually extended to all group entities, the right of approval to prevent any hostile change in our ownership, and the creation, in each of our publications, of a right of approval by the editorial staff prior to any departure of the editorial director, or the director of Le Monde. This recent achievement completes a system that already provided for this same right of approval at the time of appointments of editorial managers.
Investments
With these protections in place, our group is more stable and better equipped to carry out its mission to inform. The consequence of this statutory independence is our economic autonomy. Having been profitable for the past seven years, thanks to the excellent results of our magazines, our group has been able to regularly reinvest its earnings in a series of developments that are now bearing fruit.
These include expanding our editorial teams, with more than 540 journalists now making up Le Monde's newsroom (up from 310 in 2010), creating M, Le Monde's magazine, whose reputation and success have not waned after 12 years of existence, launching a Le Monde morning mobile app, and creating podcasts and videos on social media platforms such as YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok to strengthen our ties with younger audiences. Further developments included opening correspondent posts abroad and launching Le Monde Africa, to further affirm our interest in international issues, continuing to strengthen our capacity to cover the causes and consequences of the major climate crisis that is affecting our world, and, most recently, the launch of an English-language website and app to better share our journalism beyond France's borders. These innovations, as well as the recent advances in our guarantees of independence, are the latest milestones in Le Monde's very long history, which began in 1944 with our founder, Hubert Beuve-Méry.
It's a story that reflects the values he set out to defend when he forged this fragile yet powerful weapon: an independent newspaper. We'll be celebrating our 80th anniversary together next year, convinced that this long journey owes as much to the commitment of each and every member of our company to the freedom to inform, as it does to the loyal and ever-growing support of our readers.