Bernard Henri-Levy, Other French Public Intellectuals to Accept Texas-Atlantic Bid

Paris, France – Dallas, Texas: Sept. 25, 2006: In a joint announcement, the French Cultural Ministry and LBO firm Texas Atlantic Group said the U.S. buyout group will lead a consortium of investors in a deal that will take France’s five most prominent public intellectuals private.
The cash and stock transaction, valued at 2 billion euros or $2.4 billion in real money, will close in early 2007.
The deal’s targets, besides Levy, are, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Baudrillard, Somebody and Somebody.
David Bonkerman, founder of Texas Atlantic Group, said he and the other investors will combine the intellectual property assets of the five thinkers in a new company to be called Engage S.A. It will be based in Woodlands, Texas, an office park outside Houston.
The other investors, all buyout firms, are the Paul Blackburn Group, Silver Stream Partners, the TGIF Group and Slash and Burn Capital.
Bonkerman said that in addition to increasing returns from the print content output of the five intellectuals, the buyout group will launch a paid content web site, Engage.com, to monetize the intellectuals’ output on the Web.
“The new financial structure will mean that we will no longer be subject to quarterly pressure to publish in newspapers and journals and to appear on French book TV shows,” Levy said.
Cross-marketing will be another strategic plank in the newly privativeized group’s operations, Bonkerman said.
One of Engage’s first products will be a co-branded line of perfume to be endorsed by Levy and his wife, the lissome French model, actress, singer, and scent designer Arielle Dombasie.
“Under the current structure,” Levy said, “We are not being compensated properly for the steady flow of quips and pensees that we produce under enormous pressure.” He added that early plans call for some of the group’s output to be used as the underpinning of high-yield bonds that can be monetized in the CDO and other markets.
Bonkerman said the consortium plans for Engage to do more translations and look for spin-offs in non-print outlets such as bobble-head dolls of the five principals, Nascar hood ad placements, and more side deals like Levy’s appearance in the Grand Theft Auto video game.
The Texas Atlantic executive also said that in addition to exposing the five intellectuals to new audiences in North America, there may be opportunities, as Bonkerman put it, “to give Snoop Dog a Parisian spin.”
In addition, Engage plans to inject $500 million to speed up final coding, marketing and distribution of Baudrillard’s long-awaited video game based on the events of May 1968 in the capital.
“Sur le paves, le plage” or under the paving stones, the beach, the multi- title has been eagerly awaited by Euro-zone gamers.
Also in the works is a possible distribution deal with Wal Mart of Engage brand T-shirts, key chains and cheese graters.
But one prominent hedge fund manager said he wouldn’t touch the deal. “This is just a setup for a recap in which Texas Atlantic and their partners will add even more debt and leverage to these intellectuals to the point where they will no longer have the leisure time to sit around cafes and write their pamphlets on notebooks with thick, graph lined pages. TAG will kill the goose that writes the opinion pieces for Liberation and Le Figaro. Our fund is emphatically not interested in the bonds, the equity (if Engage returns to the public markets) or the bobble head dolls this deal will create.”


Counter-offer Emerges for Engage


A group consisting of Gaz de France, Bank Paribas, the Damone foods group, and Airbus said late yesterday, they will make an offer for the five French public intellectuals at the center of a buyout bid by a consortium of American LBO firms lead by Texas Atlantic Group. The group said they will add singer Johnny Halliday and the rights to Serge Gainsbourg’s recordings into the package in what they call a non-commercial attempt to safeguard France’s cultural hegemony.


“These writers and artists are like our Elgin marbles and we are not going to let a bunch of Texas LBO cowboys trample upon the rights of the French people to secure permanent access to this uniquely French cultural product. The output of these thinkers and artists is as uniquely French as the books to be found on the Seine’s quays with cream colored covers, no art, and titles running from the bottom to the top of the spine.”

The statement of the competing consortium went on to say, “As the heirs of the patronomie that has produced Montaigne, Collette, Renan, Racine, and MC Solaar, we will not allow this important sector of our culture to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”



Brussels turns thumbs down on French bid to stop LBO of Engage Thinkers –

The court of the First Instance of the Second Compote, the European Union’s anti-trust arbitrator, said today that a French-sponsored, counter-offer for Engage was invalid because of the involvement of the French government in putting the offer together.
“We must protect the free flow of capital among the nations of the European Union and even, regrettably, to the Americans. Even if this means Serge Gainsbourg’s oeuvre will be administered out of some dank office park in Texas, we still must enforce E.U. regulations and allow the Texas Atlantic bid to proceed.”