Hachette

Paris-based magazine, newspaper and advertising giant Hachette-Filipacchi is owned by French industrial conglomerate (cars, munitions, telecommunication gear, aerospace) Lagardere.

Its presence outside Europe is often through licensing of titles: around 157 titles, often through local editions (for example there were 31 editions of Elle, 15 of Elle Décoration and 11 of Car & Driver).

Revenue is E2.3 billion, with 51% outside France and 65% in the EU. It claims to be the third largest magazine publisher in the US and Italy, the largest in France and Spain, and globally the largest magazine publisher.

Hachette dates from a bookshop opened in Paris by Louis Hachette in the 1820s. It became a major publisher and the dominant media buyer. Lagardere acquired Hachette in 1981. A chronology for the group is here.

There's no major English-language study of Lagardere or Hachette. Richard Barbrook's splendid Media Freedom: The Contradictions of Communications in the Age of Modernity (London: Pluto Press 95) offer insights on the regulatory environment in France. For the early years see the five volume Histoire Générale de la Presse Française (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 69-1976) by Claude Bellanger, Jacques Godechot, Pierre Guiral & Fernand Terrou and The Government & the Newspaper Press in France, 1814-1881 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 59) by Irene Collins.

    Holdings

An indication of the group's holdings is here.






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