PSAM Responds To Letter Received From Vivendi On Friday, March 27, 2015

NEW YORK, March 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- P. Schoenfeld Asset Management LP ("PSAM") today issued the following letter to the Vivendi (EPA: VIV) (the "Company") Management Board, in response to the Company's letter, which PSAM received on Friday, March 27, 2015:

The full text of the letter follows:

Members of the Management Board:  Arnaud de Puyfontaine, Herve Philippe and Stephane Roussel
Chairman of the Supervisory Board:  Vincent Bollore
Vivendi S.A.
42 avenue de Friedland
75380 Paris CEDEX 08
France

Dear Sirs,

We hereby acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 27 March 2015 relating to the enforcement of French law 86-1067 dated 30 September 1986.

We are very disappointed to have received this letter at a time when we are exercising our rights as a shareholder of Vivendi S.A. (''the Company'') in accordance with French law.

Indeed, we notified you on 3 July 2014 that the funds and accounts under our management crossed above the 0.5% threshold in relation to the total number of shares outstanding and voting rights of the Company.  We did not receive any warning from you at that time.  Now, as a result of our decision to propose two resolutions to shareholders, we have received a letter whose purpose seems to be to intimidate us.  We consider this behavior totally unacceptable.  In addition, we wonder whether you are also attempting to intimidate other shareholders who are willing to support our resolutions.

Moreover, the Company, through its Management Board, is entrusted with a detailed view of share capital allocation in accordance with article 5.2 of its bylaws.  In this context, we expect that you monitor closely any risks that may be triggered by any breach of French law 86-1067 dated 30 September 1986, and carry out appropriate diligence on a regular basis.  Given the lack of transparency regarding the level of foreign ownership of Vivendi and your explicit threat to litigate against us in the event the 20% threshold is breached, we hereby request that you publicly disclose all information that you possess in relation to the application of article 40 of French law 86-1067 dated 30 September 1986, with respect to foreign ownership and historical monitoring of the 20% threshold.

We would also like to receive confirmation that the same letter delivered to us was also delivered to each of the Vivendi shareholders who were deemed foreigners under this law, including the threat to initiate litigation against any such shareholders. We believe that any letter solely directed at us would be inappropriate.

We reserve our right to claim damages, both as a result of your interference in our proposal of additional resolutions to shareholders and as a result of your lack of diligence to ensure compliance with French law 86-1067 dated 30 September 1986, on a timely basis.

We consider the speculations at the end of your letter, regarding our willingness to favor the acquisition of Vivendi assets by interested third parties to be libelous or at best, gratuitous. This is especially the case since you seem to have disclosed the content of your letter to the press.  We also reserve our right to claim damages in this respect.

Going forward, we hope you will revert to more appropriate behavior in dealing with our requests.  The sole purpose of these resolutions is to present two proposals to Vivendi shareholders so that they may individually decide what they consider to be in the best interest of the Company.

Sincerely yours,

Peter Schoenfeld
Chief Executive Officer

About PSAM
PSAM was founded by Peter M. Schoenfeld and has been providing investment advisory services since 1997, with offices in New York and London.  PSAM has approximately $3.4 billion in assets under management and invests in both equity and credit securities in global event driven opportunities. 

Additional Information
This press release is for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, an offer to sell, a solicitation of any offer to buy, an offer to purchase or a solicitation of consents with regard to any securities of Vivendi (the "Company", and such securities, the "Securities").

This release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects," "intends," "may," "estimates," "will," "should," "plans" or "anticipates" or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the suggested by the forward-looking statements. The information provided in this press release is derived from PSAM's analysis and subjective views on the Company and its Securities. Other persons, including the Company, may have different analysis and views on the information provided herein.

No reliance is accepted on this press release and PSAM disclaims any liability in relation to this press release. Investors shall only rely on their own assessment prior to taking any decision in relation to the Company and/or the Securities. PSAM do not undertake any obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

For Investor Inquiries:
MacKenzie Partners, Inc.
Dan Burch/Bob Marese
212-929-5500 / +44 20 3026 2807
[email protected] / [email protected]

For Media Inquiries:
Image 7
Anne- France Malrieu
Ph : + 33 1 53 70 74 66
C : + 33 6 89 8 761 18
[email protected]

Estelle Guillot-Tantay
Ph : + 33 1 53 70 74 93
C : + 33 6 87 60 49 58
[email protected]

ASC Advisors
Steve Bruce/Taylor Ingraham
(203) 992-1230
[email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE P. Schoenfeld Asset Management LP ("PSAM")