MundoAndino Home : Andes Chile Guide at Mundo Andino
Copesa
Copesa (Consorcio Periodistico de Chile) is a large Chilean media conglomerate, widely considered the second largest in Chile behind El Mercurio SAP. Copesa is controlled by a small group of Chile's financial elite, namely, Alvaro Saieh, Alberto Kasis, and Carlos Abumohor.
Overview
Copesa was launched during the mid-1950s by the wealthy Pico-Canas family. In the areas of newspaper circulation, El Mercurio and Copesa exert an unchallenged midia duopoly in Chile. Copesas success was largely the work of two prominent members of the Chilean right-wing political and business sector, Alvaro Saieh and Carlos Abumohor. In November 1988, these two investors joined forces with other businesspeople and members of the dictatorship to revamp the indepted conglomerate. Saieh became the largest shareholder with 33% while Abumohor held 16.6%. A month later, in December 1988, Saileh took control of the political magazine Que Pasa that was incorporated into Copesa.
Copesa published the news daily La Tercera, which is the second most read newspaper in Chile. In 2002, La Tercera had a 2002 daily circulation of about 210,000. Copesa also published three other periodicals for national distribution: the popular magazine, La Cuarta; the free daily tabloid, La Hora; and the newsweekly, Que Pasa, which offered political analyses of current events. In 2002, Que Pasa had an approximate circulation of 20 thousand readers. Copesa created websites on the Internet for its publications. The publisher also had affiliations with smaller-scale print and digital publishers. One such affiliation was with the digital company that produced "RadioZero," a music Internet site for younger audiences.
Non-media Financial Interests
Copesa has financial interest in other areas of the economy. Its financial investments have been largely channelled into the highly profitable private pension funds (Associacion de Fondos de Pensiones or AFPs) and into real estate (Pena 1998). In 1992, this media conglomerate entered into a joint venture with the printing and publishing house Ediciones Chiloe. As a result of this agreement, they established Distribucion y Servicios Meta, a company that distributes newspapers, magazines and books. Through this structure Copesa is able to print and distribute its own products.
See also
Corpbanca
Need more information for your travel research or homework?
Ask your questions at the forum about Companies of Chile or help others to find answers.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Copesa
