20 Minuten Holding with new shareholders as of 2004?

Is 20 Minuten Holding, which holds stakes in commuter newspaper publishers in Switzerland (100%), France (16%) and Spain (67%), going public in 2004? Other changes to the shareholder and holding structure are also possible. When they joined the company, the shareholders contractually agreed that they would jointly examine possible exit scenarios for the investors led by the A&A Group (29.1%) and Apax (27.8%) from the end of 2003. This was explained by Chris Tanner on request. He leads the investors put together by the A&A Group and is one of the board members of 20 Minuten Holding. According to Tanner, conceivable changes include the exit of one or both investors or the sale of parts of their share package. It is also possible that individual parts of the holding company (such as 20 Minuten Schweiz AG) could be sold. In any case, the Norwegian publishing house Schibsted, which holds a 41.3% stake in the holding company, has a right of first refusal. The holding management holds a further 1.8%.
"Financial investors also want to fix the exit at the start of their involvement," said Tanner, but there is no rush to do so. "Now is the wrong time for a sale, at least." Nevertheless, any offers would be examined at any time. "But we are clearly not in negotiations with anyone right now," he emphasized. He did not want to answer whether there have already been investment discussions with Ringier, Tamedia or NZZ (see page 11). At Apax Partners Beteiligungsberatung GmbH in Munich, Christian Stahl, responsible for media investments, explains that there is no pressure to exit, the funds set up will run for ten years (mk).