Copesa (Consorcio Periodístico de Chile) is one of the more important
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
an
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
conglomerate
Conglomerate or conglomeration may refer to:
* Conglomerate (company)
* Conglomerate (geology)
* Conglomerate (mathematics)
In popular culture:
* The Conglomerate (American group), a production crew and musical group founded by Busta Rhymes
** ...
. Copesa is controlled by
Álvaro Saieh, a Chilean business man.
Overview
Copesa was launched during the mid-1950s by the wealthy Pico-Cañas family. In the areas of
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...
circulation, El Mercurio and Copesa exert an unchallenged media
duopoly
A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...
in Chile. Copesa's success was largely the work of two prominent members of the Chilean right-wing political and business sector, Álvaro Saieh and Carlos Abumohor. In November 1988, these two investors joined forces with other businesspeople and members of the government to revamp the indebted conglomerate. Saieh became the largest
shareholder
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal o ...
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
''La Tercera'' ( es, The Third One), formerly known as ''La Tercera de la Hora'' ('the third of the hour'), is a daily newspaper published in Santiago, Chile and owned by Copesa. It is ''El Mercurio''s closest competitor.
''La Tercera'' is part ...
'', 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
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also exampl ...
for national distribution: the popular magazine, ''
La Cuarta
''La Cuarta'' ( es, The Fourth One) is a Chilean daily tabloid and part of the Copesa group. The newspaper is famous for its tone and plebeian style of headlining stories. The newspaper began publication on 13 November 1984. On 17 November 201 ...
''; the free daily tabloid, ''
La Hora''; and the newsweekly, ''Qué Pasa'', which offered
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
analyses of current events. In 2002, ''Qué Pasa'' had an approximate circulation of 20 thousand readers. Copesa created websites on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
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.
Copesa also owned Chilean airline
Aeronor Chile.
Non-media financial interests
Copesa has
financial
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...
interest in other areas of the economy. Its financial investments have been largely channelled into the highly profitable private
pension fund
A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any plan, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income.
Pension funds typically have large amounts of money to invest and are the major investors in listed and priva ...
s (Associación de Fondos de Pensiones or AFPs) and into
real estate
Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more genera ...
(Pena 1998). In 1992, this media conglomerate entered into a joint venture with the printing and publishing house Ediciones Chiloé. As a result of this agreement, they established Distribución 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
Notes
{{reflist
Mass media companies of Chile
Investment companies of Chile
Mass media in Santiago