Moritz Suter paid just over one million francs for the BZM
Moritz Suter spent very little of his own money on the purchase of Basler Zeitung Medien. Now the lenders want the company to be restructured.
Even when he bought Basler Zeitung Medien (BZM) at the end of November 2010, Moritz Suter said at a press conference in Basel that he had paid "almost nothing". Now Suter is getting more specific. "I had to pay a little more than a million. That's what we know," he told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.
At the beginning of 2010, Ticino financier Tito Tettamanti and Basel lawyer Martin Wagner had paid around 70 million Swiss francs for the Basel media group and also assumed debts of around 100 million Swiss francs. Compared to this, the sum of "a little more than a million" is vanishingly small. According to the NZZ am Sonntag, he does not want to reveal how he was able to finance the purchase. "Those who gave me the loan want us to quickly turn the company around," he explains, however. The anonymous lenders are therefore in the process of setting a direction, writes the Sunday publication - it is open whether Suter will stick to it. "Restructuring" means job cuts, and the 67-year-old Basel native has a hard time with that.
Suter is not the only one who got into the media group for little money - Martin Wagner is also said to have done so. It had always been said of the Basel business lawyer that he held a quarter of the shares in the Basel media company. In fact, he only held a quarter of the BaZ Holding shares, as he confirmed to the NZZ am Sonntag. The amount in question is said to be 250,000 francs.
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