Finance
ProSieben elects Maria Kyriacou to board amid shareholder struggle
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on May 28, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on May 28, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Maria Kyriacou joins ProSieben's board as chair amid tensions between major shareholders MFE and PPF, focusing on strategic independence.
By Klaus Lauer
(Reuters) -ProSiebenSat.1 Media elected Maria Kyriacou as chairman of its supervisory board on Wednesday, backed by Czech investment group PPF, following her appointment to the board.
The appointment of Kyriacou, a former executive at Paramount Global, Disney and ITV studios comes amid a power struggle between the company's two largest shareholders, Italy's MFE-MediaForEurope and Czech investment firm PPF.
Former supervisory board chair Andreas Wiele, who announced in January he would not seek re-election, has consistently criticised MFE's approach and supported ProSieben's strategy to remain independent.
MFE, which is controlled by Italy's Berlusconi family and runs commercial TV operations in Italy and Spain, made a lowball cash and share bid for ProSieben in March as part of a push to create a pan-European broadcaster.
MFE is considering, among other things, a joint streaming platform to better compete with U.S. giant Netflix. It is also pushing for an accelerated sale of ProSiebenSat.1's online holdings to reduce the debt burden and generate cash.
PPF, whose 14.94% stake makes it ProSieben's second-biggest shareholder after MFE with 30.14%, prefers to wait in order to gain more from holdings such as the cosmetics online retailer Flaconi or the dating platform Meet Group - "at reasonable prices", as a PPF representative said.
(Reporting by Klaus Lauer in Berlin, Bernadette Hogg and Isabel Demetz, Editing by Rachel More, Kirsten Donovan)
Maria Kyriacou was elected as chairman of ProSieben's supervisory board, backed by the Czech investment group PPF.
There is a power struggle between ProSieben's two largest shareholders, MFE-MediaForEurope and PPF, with differing strategies for the company.
MFE is considering a joint streaming platform to compete with Netflix and is pushing for an accelerated sale of ProSiebenSat.1's online holdings.
Andreas Wiele criticized MFE's approach and supported ProSieben's strategy to remain independent.
PPF holds a 14.94% stake in ProSieben, making it the second-largest shareholder after MFE, which holds 30.14%.
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