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 […]
Broadcast transmission provider Arqiva is looking at options to refinance its £3.4 billion of debt raised when Macquarie acquired National Grid Wireless in 2007, reports Reuters, quoting unnamed sources. Early stage discussions are being held between shareholders of Arqiva, the company and a few banks on how to refinance the debt, some of which matures […]
Dutch cable company Ziggo has confirmed it is selling a further 32 million shares following its launch on the Amsterdam stock exchange earlier this year. Private equity companies Cinven and Warburg Pincus, the two biggest shareholders in Ziggo, are releasing the shares. At the launch, just 21.7 per cent of the company was up for […]
Roku, a company which sells boxes that make it easy to connect to streaming web services such as Netflix, has raised a $45 million investment round from News Corp, BSkyB, an unnamed strategic investor, and existing investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners. The investments will bring Roku closer ties to a pair of properties […]
MGM Holdings, the successor owner to the original MGM studio’s assets, is considering a public offering of shares, according to a brief statement made by the studio. It has retained Goldman Sachs as an advisor. MGM entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2010. The company is now owned by a group of investment funds. […]
A couple of days ago we reported that Egypt’s giant – but cash-strapped – Radio & Television Union (ERTU) was receiving about €27 million in emergency funding in order to pay salaries. Now the country’s government is working on a scheme to dramatically increase its TV licence fees. Today’s charge for watching TV is collected […]
Egypt’s giant public broadcaster, for some time suffering near-bankruptcy, has been rescued with a Egy£200 million cash injection (€27.14m). Egypt’s Radio and Television Union ERTU) has struggled for years with massive over-manning, and more than a few cases of senior level corruption, and while the Arab Spring revolution brought with it some potential benefits for […]
India’s cable DEN Networks has a new shareholder in the shape of US investment fund Teachers Insurance Annuity/College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA/CREF), which has bought 1.3 million shares (about 1 per cent) of DEN paying Rs 145 million ($2.6m), and taking TIAA/CREFR’s total holding to 5.93 per cent. The stake makes the Teachers/College fund the […]
Media and entertainment technologist Technicolor is to start selling as much as €191 million worth of new shares to equity fund Vector Capital Group on July 16th to raise cash to reduce its debt. The capital increase, in which Vector will receive 18 per cent to 29.94 per cent of Technicolor’s equity, was approved in […]