Spaniards will have to foot the €300 million bill to implement the DTT migration following the Administration’s reduction of the planned financial aid of €40 million to €10 million, just 3 per cent of the total cost, citing lack of funds. Around 1.2 million antennae in the country will have to be re-adapted as the […]

Warner Music-owner Len Blavatnik has invested $130 million in subscription streaming service Deezer. Blavatnik’s Access Industries, which also holds stakes in Top Up TV and digital sports company Perform, has taken an undisclosed stake in Deezer. Deezer, which has its roots in France and counts mobile phone giant Orange as a shareholder, would only say […]

Belgium’s WeePee New Media Ventures has closed its seed financing round at €957,000. WeePee NMV has developed a platform for OTT TV. The platform is being offered as a service for international customers, enabling them to become a TV distributor. The founders of WeePee NMV are the Belgian telecom player WeePee (Joeri van Dooren, Andrew […]

Eutelsat raised €300 million in a bond due for repayment in 2022.  The financing was arranged via Credit Agricole and Societe Generale. Over the past few days, Eutelsat has enjoyed some favourable analyst comment from the financial community. CitiGroup, for example, rated Eutelsat its ‘Top Pick’ in terms of European satellite players (which includes SES, […]

Celeno Communications, a provider of  Wi-Fi chips and software for HD multimedia and data home networking applications, has secured a $24 million series E round of funding. The over-subscribed round included existing investors Cisco, Liberty Globa, Greylock Partners, and Pitango Venture Capital, and was joined by new investor Vintage Investment Partners. The latest round brings […]

Satellite operator Intelsat is raising $640 million in senior debt due for repayment in 2022. The cash will be used to pay off older debt as part of the $603 million due in 2016. The balance will be used to fund other corporate activity. The borrowings are made under its Intelsat Jackson Holdings subsidiary company. […]

China’s Africa Development Fund and its China Development Bank are to extend its investment strategy into African digital TV. Since 2007 around $100 million has already been directly invested, and the president of the fund, Chi Jianxin, says another $50 million has been earmarked for further investment. There could also be more given that the […]

Belgium’s largest cable operator Telenet has revealed plans to take on up to €700 million in debt and use the money to buy back shares. “Telenet … intends to implement a shareholder remuneration policy consisting mainly of share repurchases…..Telenet believes that the combination of the adjustment to the capital structure and the revised shareholder remuneration […]

Despite earlier denials, Liberty Media has confirmed it’s spinning off pay-TV unit Starz into a separately traded public company. As a standalone premium network with licensing agreements in place to run Disney and Sony theatrical films, Starz could present an attractive acquisition target for predators. Starz closed the second quarter with about 20.7 million subscribers, […]

The Church of England has pulled its nominal £1.9 million (€2.39m) investment from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp as a protest over its handling of the phone hacking scandal. The Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board, who together hold more than £8 billion of assets, sold all their shares, after the Church’s Ethical […]