Vivendi SE
is a French media company.
It can trace its origins to 1853, when Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) was created by imperial decree by Napoleon III, with the task of supplying water. It would remain in the water industry until 1976, when it began expanding into other sectors. In the 1990s, it expanded further into telecommunications and mass media, changing its name to "Vivendi" in 1998. In 2000, Vivendi purchased Seagram (which included Universal Studios) and their beverage unit was sold off to Pernod Ricard and Diageo, as a result, Vivendi renamed itself to Vivendi Universal. In 2002, Vivendi Universal spun-off its non-entertainment assets, which would be renamed to Veolia in 2003. In 2004, Vivendi Universal sold their stake in Vivendi Universal Entertainment to General Electric (owners of NBC) and formed NBCUniversal. Vivendi Universal retained ownership of Universal Music Group and Vivendi Universal Interactive respectively, while the group simply rebranded to Vivendi by 2006. In 2008, Vivendi Games merged with Activision to form Activision Blizzard. Vivendi divested their shares in NBCU to GE a year later, in order for the former to get acquired by Comcast, which was completed in 2011. Vivendi would later divest Activision Blizzard by 2016 and Universal Music was spun-off into a separate company in 2021.
Today, Vivendi is one of the largest media companies in the world, with stakes in multiple fields.
Companies, past and present, owned by Vivendi:
- Canal Plus (French pay-TV service; originally just one channel, now it encompasses a slew of channels and both satellite and streaming TV services)
- StudioCanal (Motion picture production/distribution firm; owns the libraries of Thorn EMI, Carolco Pictures and Embassy Pictures, among others)
- Editis (French book publisher)
- Gameloft
- Universal Music Group (former)
- Ubisoft (former)
- Vivendi Universal Games (former)
- Activision (former)
- Activision Blizzard (former)
- Blizzard Entertainment (former)
- Radical Entertainment (former)
- Sierra (former)
