The option would force Kirch to buy back Axel Springer's 11.5% stake in the company for £470.5m. The stake is held in Kirch's terrestrial TV station ProSiebenSat1. The two companies have been in negotiations to try and avoid the option going ahead, but talks are said to have stalled last night.
Kirch is also under threat from News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, who is understood to be considering exercising an option to sell back his 22% stake in Kirch's pay-TV group Premiere World for £1bn.
These reports fuelled speculation that Murdoch could be mulling a takeover of Kirch, following his failure to break into the US market when he lost out in his pursuit of satellite TV provider DirecTV to EchoStar.
As far as Springer is concerned, Kirch chairman Leo Kirch's relationship with the head of the Springer Empire, Friede Springer, widow of the late Axel Springer, is said to be fairly good.
Kirch owns 40% of the publisher and, due to the advertising downturn and the pressure it has put on Axel Springer, there are believed to have been internal discussions about buying Kirch out.
Kirch's dire financial situation came to light at the end of last year when it admitted it had racked up debts of £3bn through a series of payments into the pay-TV business.
At the end of last year, Kirch's banks, including Allianz unit Dresdner Bank, agreed to extend until the end of April a deadline for the payment of a £282m loan that expired in January.
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