Roularta Media Group

History and profile

Roularta Media Group is a publishing company from Belgium. The company was established by lawyer Willy De Nolf in 1954, and is a subsidiary of Koinon NV. The group operates in the France, Netherlands, and Portugal in addition to its native Belgium. The chief executive officer of the company is Rik de Nolf, who succeeded his father, Willy De Nolf, in the post in 1981.

In the early years the group published and distributed free newspapers in the Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium. The first publication of the company was a weekly magazine, De Weekbode.

The group has two main segments: Print media and audiovisual media. The print media segment consists of free newspapers such as De Streekkrant, De Zondag and Steps published in Belgium and magazines.

Roularta Media Group has both Dutch language and French language magazines in Belgium. The group was top magazine publishing company in Belgium in 2008 with total revenue of 101,062,000 €. The same year it owned 24.2% of the French language magazines and 10.6% of the Dutch language magazines in the country.

The group is the sole owner of news magazines published in the country and has a monopoly in this sector. News magazines Knack and Le Vif/L’Express are owned by it. The Belgian business magazine Trends is also part of the company.

In addition, the group is the owner of some French magazines most of which it acquired in 2006. These include L'Express, L'Expansion, L'Etudiant and Point de Vue. At the beginning of 2015 the group sold some of its French titles, namely L'Express, L'Expansion, Mieux Vivre Votre Argent, Lire, Classica, Pianiste and Studio Cine Live, to French businessman Patrick Drahi. The group also owned the Norwegian magazine Vi over 60 from 1999 to June 2008.

The other segment includes co-ownership of VMMA which includes TV and radio activities (Q-music, 4FM) and of the Regionale Media Maatschappij which owns two local TV channels, Focus TV and WTV. Kanaal Z/Canal Z which is a Belgian news and business channel is also part of the group. In addition, the group has internet properties such as lexpress.fr, knack.be and letudiant.fr.

In 2004 the Roularta Media Group acquired the Press News, the Belgian publisher of Royals, Dynasty, Hors Serie and Ace magazines. In March 2012 the group started the Dutch edition of the news and lifestyle magazine the Good Life in Belgium. Coface Services Belgium was bought by the group in March 2013. In September 2014 the group became the sole owner of the DSDW and Roularta Printing which had been partly owned by it.