3. Analyse the Prisa Group’s restructuring process and the reasons for its
implementation.
First of all, restructuring the business portfolio, in 2009 they sold its interest in
the Bolivian ATB television network and also in Portugal and Latin America.
Also, another problem was Crisol.
In 2010 they had to close CNN+ 24-hour.
In 2014 they realized to sell its general publishing business to Penguin Random
House for 72 millions. Santillana started to focus just on the educational area
because the 84% of their profit came because of it.
This year they sold Canal+ to Telefónica for 750 million euros.
The most important sale was Canal +, and the reason should be the profitability,
that it was not profitable enough. We can also say that the managers did not a
good job. The need of capital is also important.
Financial restructuring on the business portfolio. The need of capital makes
them selling a huge part of their business, for example when Miguel Pais do
Amaral bought the 10% of the firm’s Portuguese subsidiary Media Capital. And
also make alliances as the one of Prisa and the US Liberty Acquisition Holdings.
Also they had to refinance structuring into three tranches. This happened
because of the need of capital.
Organizational restructuring. They had to restructure the workforce, reducing
2.000 employees and saving 65 million euros. They also suffered an ERE which
affected 200 workers and make them saving 52.2 millions. To save money they
unemployed lot of workers.
They decided to eliminate everything that was not “necessary” or didn’t help
them to save money and increase its profitability.
4. Analyse the role of the Group’s head-office over the course of time.
What model for the management of diversified firms does it follow? How
would you assess that model in terms of the diversification strategy
adopted?
It follows a Strategic planning. This management model is a bit generic, and will
supply a lot of important central services as Corporate Committees, Business
Committee and Functional Committees. There were two Corporate Committees:
the Executive Committee and the Corporate Steering Committee. They are not
going to judge severely the managers.
In my opinion, they have adopted a good system because it maintains the SBU
´s connected and it is really important, much more in the situation that Prisa
group in a moment like this one.