Court Winds Up Russian-Owned France Soir

The Paris Commercial Court on Monday ordered the winding-up of France Soir newspaper, owned by businessman Alexander Pugachyov, the son of Russian billionaire Sergei Pugachyov, due to bankruptcy, Le Monde reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper’s assets, including its trademark rights and archives, will be sold at an auction, Le Monde says.

Pugachyov spent 80 million euros on the paper which he acquired in 2009 in an attempt to save it from bankruptcy, and another 10 million euros on the launch of the paper’s website, Le Figaro reported in June.

Pugachyov acquired France Soir in a bid to put the insolvent paper back on track. He initially managed to boost the paper’s sales by 250 percent and the online edition’s audience by 350 percent, but failed to make the paper profitable.

By 2011, the paper was generating monthly losses of 1 million euros, forcing the entrepreneur to close down the print version of France Soir and keep only the online edition.

France Soir, established in 1944, was in its heyday in the mid-’50s when the paper’s daily print-run stood at 1.5 million copies, a record for print media at that time.

Pugachyov is not the only Russian businessman to try to turn around foreign media. Alexander Lebedev owns the British Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers.

Latvia’s LNT news channel reported in early July that Russian senator Andrey Molchanov, in the Forbes list of the richest people with $1.7 billion in capital, may buy local Telegraf paper, the largest newspaper in Latvia in the Russian language, and Telegraf.lv news portal.

 

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