History of Vivendi Universal

Authorized by an imperial decree, Compagnie Générale des Eaux was founded in 1853 by investors such as the Rothschild family and Napoleon III's half-brother to irrigate French farmland and supply water to towns. It won contracts to serve Lyons (1853), Nantes (1854), Paris (1860), and Venice (1880).

After WWI Générale des Eaux created water engineering firm Société Auxiliaire de Distribution d'Eau (Sade, 1918) and extended its water distribution network to several areas of France. By 1953 the company had added trash collection to its services. In the 1960s it began managing district heating networks and waste incineration/composting plants. The company moved into construction in 1972. By the time Guy Dujouany became chairman in 1976, water distribution accounted for less than half of the company's sales.

Dujouany began an expansion drive in the 1980s. In 1980 Générale des Eaux became France's #1 private energy management firm when it bought Générale de Chauffe. Also that year it expanded its wastewater and waste management businesses and moved into transportation, buying Compagnie Générale d'Entreprises Automobiles (CGEA). The company also entered communications in the 1980s; it took a 15% stake in pay-TV provider CANAL+ (1983) and created mobile phone unit Société Francaise de Radiotelephonie (SFR, 1987).

Générale des Eaux's took its water services global in the 1990s. Dujouany stepped down in 1996, and the new helmsman, Jean-Marie Messier, dumped noncore businesses. In 1997 the company launched telecom provider Cegetel and increased its stake in publisher Havas to 30%. In 1998 the firm bought the rest of Havas (upping ownership in CANAL+) and took the name Vivendi -- representing vivacity and mobility.

Its purchase of USFilter in 1999 made Vivendi the world's largest water company; it also bought US waste management company Superior Services.

Bulking up its media holdings, it added US firm Cendant Software (educational software and games) and bought French film producer Pathé. Vivendi sold most of Pathé's assets but kept stakes in BSkyB and CANAL+'s CanalSatellite digital-TV unit. The company sold $985 million worth of real estate to Unibail and its hotel and restaurant businesses to Accor, the French hotels group.

In 2000 Vivendi and Vodafone launched an Internet portal, Vizzavi. Vivendi brought its environmental services businesses together under the Vivendi Environnement umbrella and sold a minority stake in the new company to the public. Later that year Vivendi bought Seagram and the portion of CANAL+ that it didn't already own in a $34 billion deal. The combined company became Vivendi Universal, one of the world's leading entertainment companies. To gain European Commission approval for the Seagram acquisition, Vivendi Universal is slowly unloading its stake in BSkyB. Vivendi Universal also sold Seagram's liquor business for $8.1 billion to Diageo and Pernod Ricard, which will split up the various Seagram's brands between them. The company has also started selling off its construction operations and real estate holdings.

In 2001 the company bought music download site MP3.com for its music group and textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin for its publishing unit. That year the firm sold its 55% stake in AOL France. Reducing its reliance on magazine advertising revenue, the company that year agreed to sell its trade and medical publishing businesses to British investment firm Cinven.

Also in 2001 the company struck the biggest deal in its short history by agreeing to buy the entertainment assets of USA Networks. (It already owned 42% of USA thanks to the Seagram purchase.) Vivendi plans to combine Universal Studios with the USA business -- which includes film and TV production and cable channels -- into a new company called Vivendi Universal Entertainment. Vivendi will own 93% of the new company. The renamed USA Interactive will own the rest.

History provided by www.hoovers.com

Official History from Vivendi Universal

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