Seth Gilbert, 08-28-2007
Concerns about a credit crunch and further erosion of mortgage related securities may put a damper on debt based private equity deals, notably leveraged buy outs (LBOs) but it remains to be seen if the related interest rate and capital allocation costs will impact cash based or corporate deals. It’s actually even possible that they’ll increase the rate of corporate transactions (as private equity deals slow and sellers consider alternate buyers).
In the media industry, NBC Universal apparently isn’t concerned. According to rumors first reported Sunday, and now confirmed, NBC will go ahead with a buyout of international television player Sparrowhawk Media.
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Seth Gilbert, 08-21-2007
Today’s a witching day for Tribune Co. After months of waiting the shareholders of the media giant will converge on Chicago to issue their votes of Yay or Nay on Sam Zell’s $8.4b leveraged buyout. As much as the deal should be a foregone conclusion, there’s enough uncertainty to make for a crazy day… even with shareholder approval almost assured.
Leading the charge of trouble is the company’s growing debt. Tribune already borrowed $7b to buy back shares as part of the deal. It is obligated to repay $1.5b of that within two years. The company will also borrow more than $4b more to buy out additional shares.
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Seth Gilbert, 08-14-2007
Last week, on August 8th, when Blockbuster acquired Movielink, the purchase price for the transaction was widely reported to be a steal at an amount less than $50m and maybe even less than $20m. How low a price, or how much less than those numbers, however, was unclear at the time.
Today, just how much of a bargain Blockbuster got came to light. According to Blockbuster’s official 8-k filing, the purchase price (less adjustments for cash and working capital) was a tiny $6.6m.
That’s an off–the–back–of–the–truck, fire–sale get–it–off–my–hands kind of bargain price; Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 08-9-2007
About a year ago, around June 2006, Movielink, the Windows only movie download service owned by a consortium of movie studios planted a sign in the yard and put itself up for sale. As hot as Internet video has been, and despite the success of some download services like iTunes, Movielink has sat on the market like a house needing major repairs in a bad real estate market.
Late Wednesday, after months of talk, rumor and innuendo, rental company Blockbuster stepped in to buy the unwanted property. Terms weren’t disclosed but reports have estimated the deal was well below $50m and possibly as low as $20m. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 08-8-2007
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire spans the globe (for a map see here). With such breadth and scope (and in the wake of the $5b purchase of Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones) it was easy to almost overlook another acquisition but sometimes the little things can be as telling than the big.
For $11.3m, NDS Group (Nasdaq: NNDS) , an UK based subsidiary of News Corp, is buying a small Israeli streaming video company called CastUP.
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Seth Gilbert, 08-2-2007
If you’re not a preteen, a relative of one, or someone following the media industry, you probably haven’t’ heard of Club Penguin or its rival Webkinz. 
The sites provide interactive games and social network like features for preteens. Club Penguin, launched in 2005, was designed to be a fun, safe, game and activity environment for today’s internet enabled children aged 6 to 14; MySpace for the younger set. On the site, kids can adopt and interact with virtual Penguins or chat and play games with other kids on the site.
Wednesday, coinciding with their earnings release, Disney announced they were buying the British Colombia based company for $350m in cash plus revenue performance incentives that could make the kids social network worth as much as $700m.
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Seth Gilbert, 08-1-2007
It’s official. Yesterday, as expected, the boards of News Corp and Dow Jones each met to approve News Corps buyout offer. With sufficient support from shareholders secured, the deal will go ahead. It will likely take about four months to transition. Once complete, Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation will reign over what is arguably the largest single owned territory of business media in the world.
There’s nothing like a map to show how big something is. So here it is, a visual layout of the mammoth that is News Corp. (Click the map and a page will launch with a larger image to display. If that image still is not large enough, a downloadable PDF or MS Word version is hosted on Scribd.)
