This month, Paris Match, the influential French magazine Vivendi took over when it bought control of rival media group Lagardere, put a relatively obscure, ultra-conservative cardinal, Robert Sarah, from Guinea on its cover. Sarah has in the past come down strongly against “western ideologies over homosexuality and abortion and Islamic fanaticism.”
The shift in the narrative that Bollore is trying to bring about has raised hackles in France. Journalists have protested. At book-publishing unit Hachette, which includes Little, Brown and Co. in the US and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, some high-profile French authors are leaving.
“Hachette falling under Vincent Bollore’s control is a worrying signal knowing what happened to the other media he manages, with their editorial freedom in danger,” said Fabrice Lhomme, a reporter at the French newspaper Le Monde and co-author of best-selling books on the country’s politics. He and other French authors like Virginie Grimaldi and Jacques Attali have fled Hachette’s publishing house Fayard.
Bollore brushes aside critics, saying his media outlets are politically diverse and even carry works by far-left French politician Jean-Luc Melenchon. At a French Senate hearing in January on his growing influence, the billionaire insisted his political clout is marginal.
“It’s a uniquely economic project,” he said. “Our interest is neither political nor ideological.”
Bollore is relatively new to the media business. Born in a wealthy Paris suburb, he comes from a family that created a paper manufacturer 200 years ago in the town of Ergue-Gaberic in Brittany, on the western tip of France. He began his career as a banker and joined Edmond de Rothschild before overhauling the struggling family paper factory and listing it. Bollore quickly earned the moniker “Le Smiling Killer” in the French media as he stealthily bought stakes in companies including Lazard, Havas, Ubisoft and Bouygues. Over the years, his group has grown, giving him a net worth of about $6.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bollore’s media forays have been driven by his deep Catholic faith and his desire to preserve a certain idea of France and Europe, people close to him say.
His penchant for tradition was on full display on the sunny but chilly morning of Feb. 17 as the Bollore holding company celebrated its bicentenary at the Kerdevot Chapel, a Gothic church in the Brittany countryside. About 200 Parisian executives in suits were squeezed into the shrine as Bollore entered in an elaborately embroidered local costume — complete with a flat, black hat.
As bodyguards in leather jackets lined the porch and a band played old Celtic tunes, three of Bollore’s four children, Yannick, Marie and Cyrille, walked ahead of him, with the men wearing outfits similar to their father’s. Cyrille carried a large, gilded cross. The family sat in the first pew facing an altar with 200 candles as a hymn praising the Virgin Mary brought tears to Bollore’s eyes.
In a brief interview as he herded his guests toward buses that took them to his ancestral manor on the banks of the River Odet for some local shrimps, Bollore said, “We are here for this mass because this is how it started — same place, same family, 200 years of history.”
Bollore says he wants to create a Latin-culture Netflix to ensure European voices are not drowned out.
“Versailles and Clovis are more interesting than Superman 2, 3 and 4,” he told French senators. “Alongside American soft power, and its content, alongside Asian content, which is increasingly present, European content brings a certain freshness, no doubt very interesting to conserve for the sake of our past, but above all to export. We want to create a champion of European and French culture.”