Description
Promotora de Informaciones, S.A. (PRISA) is a Spanish media conglomerate headquartered in Madrid, Spain.
It is one of the largest media companies in Spain and all of Latin America, producing a wide variety of educational, cultural and informative content. PRISA owns a portfolio of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television networks. The majority subsidiaries and brands of the company are El País, Cadena SER, and Santillana.
History and profile
The PRISA group was founded in 1972 The company was established as part of the Spanish transition towards democracy. by Jesús de Polanco, who was the major shareholder and the president of the company until his death on 21 July 2007. The other founder was José Ortega Spotorno, the son of the philosopher Ortega y Gasset. The son of Jesús de Polanco, Ignacio Polanco, succeeded him as the president of PRISA.
In 2006, the share of the group in the Spanish press market was only 15%.
As of 2010, it was controlled by Nicolas Berggruen. At the end of 2010 the US hedge fund Liberty Acquisitions Holdings acquired 51% of the company.
In March 2014, Prisa sold part of the Grupo Santillana, the Alfaguara publishing house, to Penguin Random House for 72 million euros.
In 2014, the Prisa group closed the sale of its 56% stake in the Digital+ channel marketed under the name Canal+ España to Telefónica for an estimated amount of 750 million euros.
In 2016 it became known that PRISA had paid its board members 80 million Euros since 2012, despite deep cuts and layoffs in the newsrooms of El Pais, and a "95 percent crash in Prisa´s stock over the past 5 years" as well as debt of at least 1.5 billion Euros.
In July 2017, Altice announced the acquisition of Media Capital, a Portuguese company dedicated to the media, which in particular owns TVI, Prisa, for approximately 440 million euros, but which shortly after refused to sell it to Altice.
In October 2017, Juan Luis Cebrián agreed to step down after chairing PRISA for "more than three decades".
In October 2020, Santillana Spain was sold to the Finnish group Sanoma for 465 million euros, as the company announced to the National Securities Market Commission.
In January 2021, French conglomerate Vivendi announced the acquisition of a stake in the capital of Prisa, amounting to 9.9%.
