Berlusconi family look to buy controlling share in Portugal’s Impresa media empire
The race is on to find a buyer to rescue Portugal’s Impresa media empire which includes the major television station SIC TV and the respected weekend broadsheet newspaper Expresso. (the latter founded in 1973)
Impresa has revealed that it is in negotiations with Italy’s MFE that has shown an interest in acquiring a “relevant position” in the Portuguese media group that was founded by former Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão (1981-1983) and co-founder of the centre-right conservative PSD party in 1974.
At the time Impresa was founded in 1991, SIC TV was Portugal’s first private and commercial television station, becoming famous for Italian-style shows and Portugal’s answer to the Oscars, Emmys, Tonys and Grammys all rolled into one – the Globos de Ouro.
According to Portuguese media sources, the Balsemão family is looking for a new shareholder because the media group’s financial state is in dire straits.
The Italian Group MediaforEurope (MFE) looks to be one of the main contenders for a buyout. SIC has got itself in debt to pay dividends to its shareholder Impresa SGPS and cannot pay the interest on the loans, let alone pay for the spiralling costs of supporting the structure.
The Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM) has asked for clarifications on the situation regarding the possible buyout, with Impresa stating that the “possibility of the MFE Group acquiring a relevant direct or indirect share to control Impresa cannot be ruled out.”
Either way, the media group urgently needs a capital injection to stave off bankruptcy as Impresa faces historic debts, dwindling own capital, and almost non-existent cashflow.
In recent months, various high-profile Portuguese business figures have shown an interest in saving the company, including former banking whizz kid, Sir António Horta Osório, and former BPI bank administrator, Pedro Barreto – from the bank that bankrolled the media group.
Barreto began a roadshow to try and raise money from leading Portuguese families and invest it in Impresa SGPS, a listed company of which the Balsemão family holds a controlling 50% share, and which controls both SIC and Expresso.
The plan would have enabled the company’s re-capitalisation while maintaining the company’s current power structure led by the Balsemão family.
The goal was for Pedro Barreto and CEO Francisco Pedro Balsemão (the son of the founder ) to convince six-eight ‘family offices’ – many of them rich families from the North of Portugal – to each pump in around €8 million, but faced with the risk and a cooling European economy, none took the bait.
The Soares dos Santos family (Pingo Doce supermarkets) has been considering injecting €50 million – the company needs around €80 million to rebalance its books.
The company’s net debt has seen a sharp growth in recent years, going from €107.2 million in 2022 to €115.5 million in 2023, €130.9 million in 2024, and €148.2 million in the first half of 2025.
