The transaction will take effect on 1 January 2004. Agora Retail will immediately take charge of the operating activities of these publications, handling sales, production and contacts with pharmacists, readers and advertisers.

Optima has a REMP-controlled circulation of 262,561 copies in 2002 and 727,000 readers. It is distributed in pharmacies all over the country and is published in French and German. The title has been in existence for 29 years and is the market leader, being distributed mainly by pharmacists who hand it out free of charge to their customers. Optipharm, a pharmacy trade magazine, has a circulation of 10,000 copies and is a well-established information distribution channel.

Agora Retail SA, which was formed in Geneva in 2002, is an independent and neutral services company devoted to health and beauty professionals (agoraretail.ch). Under the leadership of its founder, managing director and majority shareholder, Xavier Bouhet (aged 36), Agora Retail has developed service activities for the perfumery and pharmacy markets, with special expertise in four centres of excellence: publishing, sales/marketing surveys, training, visual identity/fitting out of sales outlets. Agora Retail's main publication is Cipria, a perfumery magazine (120,000 copies for Switzerland). The quality of Agora Retail's strategy enabled it to be selected in 2003 by the Genilem foundation to assist its expansion. One of its shareholders is the publisher Georges Naef, who is also a director of the company.

For Edipresse, the desire and ability to develop its publications was the main selection criterion in choosing the buyer. With its professionalism, its network in the health world and its ambitious plans for Optima and Optipharm, Agora Retail emerged as the buyer best able to meet this requirement.

For Agora Retail, the objective is to strengthen the Optima publications in their core business: health and pharmaceuticals, and thus to become the privileged partner of pharmacists and health professionals.

Contact us

For any further information:

• Xavier Bouhet, Management and Advertising, AGORA RETAIL S.A., Quai Wilson 33, 1201 Geneva, tel. 022/731.50.08 - optima@agoraretail.ch
• Tibère Adler, chief executive officer Edipresse Switzerland, tel. 021/349.45.24