Sameer Jain gets print, Vineet broadcast, digital as Times Grp splits: Rpt

Sameer Jain's share is believed to account for the media conglomerate's highest revenue-grossing business

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India’s largest media conglomerate The Times Group has finally reached an agreement to split the group’s businesses between the two brothers - Sameer Jain and Vineet Jain, a media report said.

According to the report, the elder brother, Sameer, is slated to get the print businesses of the group along with their digital editions. His share is believed to account for the media conglomerate’s highest revenue-grossing business.

His younger brother, Vineet, would be getting the digital, TV and entertainment businesses of the media house.

Taking to Twitter, RPG Group Chairman Harsh Goenka commented on the development saying “All is well that ends well.”

Early this month, Bloomberg reported that Samir and Vineet, who jointly control BCCL, had initiated talks with financiers to fund a partition of the group.

According to the report, which quoted unnamed sources, the brothers had been working on carving out the sprawling group between them in a mediated partition over the past year.

Meanwhile, Bennett Coleman & Co, is merging five of its subsidiaries with itself as part of its plan to clean up the company's structure, in accordance with a National Company Law Tribunal order. The NCLT cleared the merger on May 4, effective April 2021.

The publisher of the Times of India newspaper saaid it is merging its subsidiaries, Mind Games Shows Pvt (MGSPL), Ananta PropertiesPvt (APPL), Amrita Estates Pvt (AEPL), Times Digital (TDL) Times Journal (TJIL)and Vinabella Media and Entertainment Pvt (VMEPL) with itself. The company had 26 subsidiaries on March 2021, according to its filings with the government.

Bennett Coleman & Co runs India’s top newspaper The Times of India, and financial daily The Economic Times.

BCCL's digital news arms, Times Internet and Global Broadcasting, which operates a slew of news channels, are not part ofthe restructuring exercise.