{"id":12892,"date":"2013-04-29T09:57:14","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T07:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=12892"},"modified":"2019-05-02T14:59:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T12:59:14","slug":"the-irony-of-the-french-governments-intervention-in-the-yahoo-dailymotion-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2013\/04\/the-irony-of-the-french-governments-intervention-in-the-yahoo-dailymotion-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The irony of the French government&#8217;s intervention in the Yahoo! &#8211; Dailymotion deal&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12893\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12893\" style=\"width: 570px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12893\" alt=\"Photo via Les Echos\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/assets\/562596_0202735724574_web_tete.jpg\" width=\"570\" height=\"377\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12893\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesechos.fr\/entreprises-secteurs\/medias\/actu\/0202735724419-l-etat-cherche-une-solution-pour-dailymotion-562596.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Les Echos<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Last week, my cofounder wrote about how the <a title=\"Did the French government put the breaks on the Dailymotion \u2013 Yahoo deal?\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/2013\/04\/25\/did-the-french-government-put-the-breaks-on-the-dailymotion-yahoo-deal\/\">French government&#8217;s may potentially be slowing the deal for Yahoo to acquire 75% of Dailymotion<\/a> (currently 100% owned by Orange). This morning, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesechos.fr\/entreprises-secteurs\/medias\/actu\/0202735724419-l-etat-cherche-une-solution-pour-dailymotion-562596.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Les Echos<\/a>\u00a0confirmed that the government is indeed looking for alternative solutions, and, essentially, refuses to let foreign companies buy a majority stake in Dailymotion. The French government currently maintains a 27% stake in the Orange&#8217;s parent company via the French sovereign wealth fund FSI, and thus has a bit of power over this deal, unfortunately.<\/p>\n<h4>The Irony of it all&#8230;.<\/h4>\n<p>In the aforementioned article, Les Echos states that the government wants to &#8220;give Dailymotion what it needs to grow&#8221; &#8211; what a bunch of bulls$%t. The Dailymotion executives stated that, in visiting Fleur Pellerin last week, they said that they were looking to raise 50 Million euros (despite being profitable for the last 2 years), in order to expand into new countries (Brazil, Spain, Japan, etc.), as well as make acquisitions and invest in R&amp;D. The French government&#8217;s response: Don&#8217;t worry, we&#8217;ve got tax payer&#8217;s money. You can have it all.<\/p>\n<h4>The French Government = Dumb Money<\/h4>\n<p>The French Government is the embodiment of <strong>dumb money<\/strong>. Dailymotion is currently valued at 300 million euros &#8211; the new BPI (Banque Publique d&#8217;Investissement) will have 400 million euros to invest in startups &#8211; and the French government will likely empty its coffers in order to keep Dailymotion &#8216;Made in France.&#8217; What the French Government doesn&#8217;t realize is that when companies want to go global &#8211; take fellow French startup Criteo, for example &#8211; they seek for investors that have more than just wallets, but have experience in the markets, a network they can take advantage of. In <a title=\"CEO JB Rudelle calls Criteo a Ninja Turtle on the eve of Series D fundraising\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/2012\/09\/26\/ceo-jb-rudelle-calls-criteo-a-ninja-turtle-on-the-even-of-series-d-fundraising\/\">Criteo&#8217;s most recent round of funding<\/a>, they raised from Yahoo! Japan &#8211; likely to enter the Japanese market.<\/p>\n<p>Like a parent who hugs their child so hard that they suffocate them, the French Government has already shown that it&#8217;s willing to pick winners. Imagine an investment fund that invested half of its round in one company &#8211; no hedging of bets, just an uneducated desire to maintain what works moderately well.<\/p>\n<p>Dailymotion has an opportunity to work with a global internet portal that is still undervalued, and being led by someone who knows Google inside &amp; out. If Marissa Mayer thinks she can create value out of Dailymotion, the best thing for Dailymotion is to explore that possibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, my cofounder wrote about how the French government&#8217;s may potentially be slowing the deal for Yahoo to acquire 75% of Dailymotion (currently 100% owned by Orange). This morning, Les Echos\u00a0confirmed that the government is indeed looking for alternative solutions, and, essentially, refuses to let foreign companies buy a majority stake in Dailymotion. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":12893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[8201,8039,8708],"class_list":["post-12892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-dailymotion-en-2","tag-orange-en-2","tag-yahoo-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}