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Liberty Global - ITV takeover may be off the table

Liberty Global have talked down speculation (July 2014)

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BA
bilky asko
Quote:
Virgin Media owner Liberty Global has acquired BSkyB’s 6.4% stake in ITV for £481m.

ITV’s share price rose 7% to 196p in early trading as investors enthusiastically greeted the move as a signal that the UK’s largest free-to-air commercial broadcaster is likely to be snapped up.

BSkyB swooped to take a 17.9% stake in ITV for £940m in 2006 as a blocking move to stop the threat of a takeover by NTL, which later merged with Telewest to create Virgin Media.

Now John Malone’s cable giant Liberty Global, which snapped up Virgin Media last year for £15bn, has renewed the prospect of a takeover.

Liberty Global chief executive Mike Fries said: “This is an opportunistic and attractive investment for us in our largest cable market. ITV is the leading commercial broadcaster in the UK and we’re excited to be shareholders.”

The company said that it does not intend to make an offer to buy ITV outright, but it does reserve the right to do so within the next six months.


article here ……..

MEDIA on THEGUARDIAN.COM
17-Jul-2014 @ 14:19

It seems that ITV are hot property again, and could be another takeover target.
Last edited by bilky asko on 18 October 2014 3:38pm - 3 times in total
:-(
A former member
Oh dear this is NOT good news....
LL
Larry the Loafer
Would somebody care to explain why this is a "bad" thing? I get how a company monopolising ITV could be dangerous as opposed to having lots of fingers in the pie, but Liberty Global aren't a malicious company... are they?
WH
Whataday Founding member
I know The Guardian doesn't like to dwell on facts too much but I'm pretty sure NTL and Telewest had merged and linked with Virgin already at the point they made the bid for ITV.
RI
Rijowhi
I'm cautiously happy to hear this news, as I feel that BSkyB as Britain's biggest satellite Broadcaster (plus the biggest pay TV operator) should never have been able to buy one share of a rival company that is Britain's biggest commercial Broadcaster (ITV) in my opinion. I feel it's not good for competition, no matter how small the shareholding.

Will be interesting to see what Liberty do next too...
BA
bilky asko
Rijowhi posted:
I'm cautiously happy to hear this news, as I feel that BSkyB as Britain's biggest satellite Broadcaster (plus the biggest pay TV operator) should never have been able to buy one share of a rival company that is Britain's biggest commercial Broadcaster (ITV) in my opinion. I feel it's not good for competition, no matter how small the shareholding.

Will be interesting to see what Liberty do next too...


Part of their share had already been sold due to competition concerns.
BR
Brekkie
And to be fair to Sky it never really caused any problems. The only thing you might argue is about the HD channels being behind a paywall, but ITV's rivals have struck similar deals so that argument is a non-starter. It has purely been a financial arrangement - on screen neither Sky or ITV have obviously benefitted from the deal.
RI
Rijowhi
bilky asko posted:
Rijowhi posted:
I'm cautiously happy to hear this news, as I feel that BSkyB as Britain's biggest satellite Broadcaster (plus the biggest pay TV operator) should never have been able to buy one share of a rival company that is Britain's biggest commercial Broadcaster (ITV) in my opinion. I feel it's not good for competition, no matter how small the shareholding.

Will be interesting to see what Liberty do next too...


Part of their share had already been sold due to competition concerns.


I know what you and Brekkie are saying as I was originally gonna state in my post that a large percentage of the share got showed due to competition concerns. It's just I don't believe that BSkyB should have had any share in one of it's main Broadcasting competitors.

48 days later

:-(
A former member
It seems this has gone unnoticed by a few of you around here:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2740079/MARKET-REPORT-Liberty-Global-takeover-talk-gives-ITV-shares-lift.html

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/156092/ITV-has-takeover-bid-from-US-cable-giant-Liberty-Global

http://www.cityam.com/1409618116/london-report-ftse-climbs-after-talk-itv-takeover-liberty-global

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/11064518/Liberty-Global-positions-for-ITV-takeover.html
HC
Hatton Cross
Rijowhi posted:
I'm cautiously happy to hear this news, as I feel that BSkyB as Britain's biggest satellite Broadcaster (plus the biggest pay TV operator) should never have been able to buy one share of a rival company that is Britain's biggest commercial Broadcaster (ITV) in my opinion. I feel it's not good for competition, no matter how small the shareholding.

..


Err. So its a bad thing, in your opinion, for the largest pay TV operator (sky) to have a stake in ITV - but it's ok for the largest cable pay TV operator to have one.
HC
Hatton Cross
623058 posted:
Oh dear this is NOT good news....


So, if Liberty brought back full regionality and local pres to ITV- you would still think it was bad news?
:-(
A former member
Why on earth would they do that?
Pete, gottago and Jon gave kudos

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