Harrowing Philippe (press baron)

Philippe Harrowing is a French press baron, current leader of the Groupe Harrowing Media, is the son of Robert Harrowing, which was called “the papivore” because of its insatiable appetite for the purchase of newspapers and periodicals.

It works towards the same ends as his father, but in a less media way. It was formed at good school while passing by all the stations of a daily newspaper (of the drafting to printing works) before his/her father does not entrust the direction of “Center-Press to him” (regional newspaper of the Massif Central). After a “training course” with the head of the daily newspaper “the France-Antilles”, it becomes in 1985 the chairman of the company of the same name, after the division operation, in two legal entities distinct from the Harrowing group (the Socpresse and the France-Antilles), carried out in order to circumvent the law on the concentration of the press (law Fillioud-Mauroy). Actually, it was about a false division for better reigning in the world of the written communication, whereas this group controlled already 38% of the French national press and a fifth of the regional press.

With the purchase of Filanosa SA (the Coast, etc) in Switzerland in July 2001, Philippe Harrowing carried out in spring the 2002 acquisition of the Company neuchâteloise of press with, inter alia, the daily newspapers “the Express train of Neuchâtel” and “the Impartial one of the Chaux-de-Fonds” and a very powerful printing works in Neuchâtel; with certainly like drank to create an influential press group starting from the French-speaking Switzerland, but first of all to make quickly play “synergies” between the companies of the two branches of the Harrowing group (various publications in the Rhone-Alps, in Savoy, in Franche-Comté or Burgundy) and the companies now controlled on Swiss ground, to concentrate the production where it will be most profitable.

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