THE FOURTH ESTATE
Gossip. All good newsrooms are hotbeds of gossip, so it’s no surprise that few places circulate gossip quite like the offices of London’s leading financial daily. But even by those standards, what came through the transom this week was gossip of the highest order.
Lede digging. The story, told to us by several sources at the salmon-colored daily, is that Jamil Anderlini (the former FT Asia editor who is now the regional manager for Politico Europe in Brussels) recently visited Japan, where he tried to find out from Nikkei, the owner of the FT, whether they would be open to an approach from Axel Springer, Politico’s German parent company.
The one that got away. Springer’s failed bid to acquire the FT in 2015 is a corporate trauma in the annals. After courting the FT’s then owner, Pearson, for more than a year, the Germans thought they had secured the trophy, until Nikkei swooped in at the last minute with an offer that beat Springer’s.
Rebuilding relationships. Springer CEO Matthias Döpfner was so disheartened by the rejection that he made what many considered a reckless move just a couple of months later, acquiring Business Insider, a U.S.-based provider of corporate news in the low-market. Springer shelled out $442 million, ten times BI’s revenue, a price that many considered excessive. (Acquisitions in the industry typically go for close to five times revenue.)
Looking at Wall Street. Even if the BI deal was expensive, it was not a disaster. And yet… for a man who fancies himself a media mogul, it was clear that BI was essentially a poor man’s Wall Street Journal, lacking the “globalist elite” credentials he sought. In recent years, Springer has encouraged speculation that it was interested in the Rupert Murdoch-controlled WSJ, most recently in an interview Döpfner gave to the FT last month. (Buying the WSJ is an unlikely proposition, given that Murdoch has worked hard to acquire it and has shown no sign of wanting to get rid of it.)
Unveiling the kimono. More tellingly, Döpfner also mentioned the FT, describing it and the Journal as “two super brands in the world that I am very passionate about.”
Unorthodox. It would be unusual, to say the least, to send a mid-level executive to Japan to test the waters for a deal of this size. These kinds of low-key missions are usually undertaken by investment bankers. But Springer is an unorthodox company, so you never know.
So what’s really going on? To find out, we reached out to Anderlini, who confirmed that he had recently been to Japan. “It’s true that I went to Tokyo in mid-December last year for a vacation,” he wrote in an email. “I met my uncle, who doesn’t work for Nikkei. Then I went alone to my small apartment in the Echigo-Yuzawa ski resort and an onsen before returning to Brussels.”
Lost in translation. A senior Springer source claims that it was Anderlini who initially came up with the idea to approach Nikkei, but in the end he was unable to even arrange a meeting with them.
Snow job? There's no denying that skiing in Japan has been great this year, with record snowfalls in many places. PROVINCE TALK
Fritz's Art of Deal Making
Friedrich Merz, the eternal chancellor in waiting, finally appears poised to seize the bronze ring. By garnering a majority for a debt-financed investment deal that spans from the Christian Democrats to the Greens, not the Social Democrats, he appears to have cleared the last major hurdle on his path to the chancellery.
Bananas. It was more farce than a master class in negotiation. There was hardly a banana peel that Merz didn't slip on as he chased the Greens for a deal that everyone knew they wanted anyway.
Assuming that Merz was so convinced that the Greens would approve his budget spending that he did not discuss it with them before announcing the agreement with the SPD.
A call to 1990: Unable to reach Green Party parliamentary co-chair Britta Hasselmann, Merz decided to leave her a long voicemail with a series of proposed concessions, then turned to pitch his idea to reporters, telling them that Green Party support “must be safe.”
Tree hugs. Hasselmann was “in the woods for an hour” and returned to find that Merz had spammed her inbox. Much to Merz's surprise, his generous offer to insert the word “climate” into the proposed legislation did not seal the deal.
So Merz – very publicly – tried a few other tactics last week.
Flattery: “We had extremely good, very trusting talks with the Greens,” Merz said. “I would like to thank them for allowing us to do this.” Oh, and climate change is taken “very seriously.”
Offended: “What else do you want in such a short period of time, other than what we have just offered you in the negotiations?” Merz later pleaded.
Capitulation: Virtually unlimited aid to Ukraine and €100 billion in funding to achieve net zero emissions are what ultimately appeased the Greens.
Sometimes the deal is as simple as giving the other party everything they asked for. The Merzel memes are already locked and loaded.
For what it's worth? The week certainly made Germans wonder whether Merz has what it takes. For Alice Weidel's far-right AfD, it was proof that he doesn't.
“Angela Merkel was right,” Weidel told him in the Bundestag, alluding to the tense relationship between Merz and Merkel.
Diplomatic acumen. If nothing else, Merz managed to get Weidel to finally agree on something with Merkel.
This should be a warning to Merz.
That's all for this week. Remember: send your tips to [email protected] .
Sayonara!
Source: Source
