Il Giornale: Berlusconi wants to keep a minority stake
How will the story for the sale of the newspaper end? Negotiations between families Angelucci and Berlusconi would have stopped. But that’s actually not exactly the case. Indeed, as Affaritaliani.it can report, the idea would be to sell a majority stake in the newspaper to Angelucci, around 60%, leaving however in the hands of Paolo Berlusconi a 40% which would allow to maintain a symbol of the family.
The newspaper is certainly not among the most fruitful activities of the group headed by Silvio Berlusconi. It costs around 10-12 million a year and currently the property is divided between: Pbf of Paolo Berlusconi with 73.55%, Mondadori with 18.45% and Periodica with 8%. But it is known that the ex-premier is very close to the newspaper founded by Indro Montanelli and would not want to part with it, nor would he want his family to do so. Hence the idea of selling the majority to Angelucci, while maintaining a share which could be defined as “affective”.
Once the majority is found de Il Giornale, how would Angelucci move? The idea is to create a new center-right press galaxy, which foresees a three-pronged attack (with a forthcoming fourth). Il Giornale would remain close to the positions of Come on Italy, Libero he would side with the League while Il Tempo would remain a Roman newspaper closest to Brothers of Italy.
It then remains to understand (and here the four-pronged attack could emerge) what to do with The truth. The newspaper edited and directed by Maurizio Belpietro it could also end up in the Angelucci galaxy acting a bit as a “free hitter”, as a sapper who arises – starting from the centre-right – on more autonomous positions and not attributable to any party of government.
It seems, among other things, that Belpietro himself, who enjoys a large and very faithful “fan-base”, has run into difficulties in managing the magazines that it took over from the Mondadori group. Redundancies and staff optimizations were not enough. And it also seems that the most critical positions towards Covid and vaccines that La Verità has taken – just go and review the interviews with the deputy director Francesco Borgonovo – today have less hold in public opinion. The die would therefore be cast: Angelucci dreams of becoming the new reference publisher for the entire centre-right. A sort of Italian Rupert Murdoch.
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