Egeria to sell NRC

The deal is reportedly worth somewhere in the region of €90-100m.

Egeria began looking at sale options for NRC in the spring, but was apparently asking for a price of €115m, which was subsequently deemed too high. According to Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad, Telegraaf Media Groep made an offer of €90m in the summer, which Egeria rejected.

Mediahuis is buying the asset through its Mediahuis Netherlands subsidiary, and has agreed to the acquisition alongside the Netherlands' Foundation for Democracy & Media. as well as Dutch media company Veronica Association.

Mediahuis is taking an 80% stake in the business, with the two other backers taking 10% each. The deal is expected to complete in the new year.

Previous investment
Egeria acquired De Persgroep's NRC newspapers and related activities in March 2010, taking a 91% stake in the business with the shareholders of Het Gesprek, a Dutch television channel that no longer broadcasts, buying the balance.

The deal saw the new backers invest via the newly formed holding company NRC Media Holding, and valued NRC at around €68m.

Company
Headquartered in Amsterdam, NRC is a newspaper group whose titles include NRC Handelsblad, a daily evening newspaper that launched in 1970, and nrc.next, a daily morning edition that launched in 2006.

The company claims to have a subscriber base of around 290,000. Its print titles pull in around 1 million readers per month, while its digital media attracts 4.5 million.

NRC generated around €118m in turnover last year, as well as profits of €4.6m. The company employs 350 staff.

People
Rien van Beemen is the CEO of NRC. Gert Ysebaert is the CEO of Mediahuis. Egeria managing partner Peter Visser currently holds a seat on NRC's supervisory board. Investment manager Egbert Prenger has also been involved in the firm's management of its investment in NRC.

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