Televisa Chief Boosts Stake for Control of Parent Firm

Emilio Azcarraga Jean, chairman and chief executive of Mexico’s Grupo Televisa, spent $400 million to boost his stake in Grupo Televicentro, which controls the broadcast company.

Azcarraga Jean now owns 52% of holding company Televicentro, said Robert Lerner of Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc., an outside spokesman for the company.

Before the transaction, Azcarraga Jean may have owned about 17% of Televicentro, analysts said. It could not be immediately learned from whom he bought the shares.

Azcarraga Jean succeeded his late father, Emilio “El Tigre” Azcarraga Milmo, as chairman in April.

Azcarraga Jean “is now the one with all the marbles,” which should allay concerns of some investors about management and ownership control at Mexico’s largest media company, said Francisco Rivero, who follows Televisa for Valores Finamex.

“Since El Tigre died, the central question has been, ‘Who’s going to control Televisa?’ ” Rivero said.

Televisa’s American depositary receipts, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange, closed at $16.38, down 13 cents.

Televicentro owns about 52% of Televisa’s voting shares, and Grupo Alameda, another private company formed by Emilio Azcarraga Milmo to boost his control of the company, owns about 14%; the remaining 33% is in the hands of outside investors, analysts said.

Now Televisa vice chairman Alejandro Azcarraga Burillo, a cousin of the chairman, owns 14% of Televicentro, and company executives and board members Miguel Aleman Velasco and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani together own another 14%.