Vivendi falls on rumours of €480m offer for French football TV rights

Vivendi Universal continued to scare investors yesterday, as reports surfaced that the media giant had paid a high price for the rights to televise French football and that it was making further moves to raise money for a multibillion-euro bid for Cegetel.

In a further development, there was speculation that Barry Diller, the US media tycoon who runs Vivendi's US assets would be named co-chief executive, to work alongside the company's French chief executive, Jean-Rene Fourtou.

That may mean cash-strapped Vivendi is looking to tap the US markets for money, through a share offering. Mr Diller is a highly regarded media executive in the US, while Mr Fourtou was only appointed in July and is largely an unknown quantity outside France.

Vivendi Universal is thought also to be talking to private equity houses about helping it raise €6.6bn (£4.2bn) to trump Vodafone's bid for control of France's Cegetel, a lucrative telecoms business.

Heavyweight US private equity firms Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts were linked to a Vivendi plan to get outside investors to inject cash into a special purpose vehicle that would be used to buy the stakes in Cegetel owned by BT and SBC, a US company. Belgian financier Albert Frere was also named as a possible investor in the Vivendi bid.

Vivendi must raise the necessary funds to buy out BT and SBC from Cegetel by 10 December or see these stakes go to Vodafone, which has already tabled bids for both holdings.

Earlier in the day, Vivendi shares dropped after French newspaper reports that it has offered as much as €480m per year to win a fierce bidding war for French football broadcasting rights. The company's shares fell 5 per cent to €11.9. The sum would be sharply higher than the €300m a year that Vivendi's pay-TV business, Canal Plus, paid last time for the rights to broadcast France's top football games.