Liberty Media
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The Liberty Media Corporation is an American media conglomerate and the control is exercised by engineer Dr. John Malone, with a majority of the voting shares. In May 2006, Liberty shareholders approved the creation of four new tracking stocks, two classes for each of Liberty's two businesses:[1]
- Liberty Interactive Group (NASDAQ: LINTA,NASDAQ: LINTB)
- Liberty Capital (NASDAQ: LCAPA, NASDAQ: LCAPB)
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[edit] Liberty Interactive Group
Attributed to Liberty Interactive Group are:
- QVC, Inc.
- Provide Commerce
and Liberty's interests in:
- Expedia, Inc.
- IAC/InterActiveCorp
- OpenTV
[edit] Liberty Capital
Attributed to Liberty Capital are:
- Liberty's 39.5% interest in The DirecTV Group (swapping stakes with News Corporation) and also majority interest in DirecTV
- 2.6 percent of Time Warner[2]
Liberty's other private and public assets include
- Starz, LLC (including Starz!, Starz Media, and Encore);
- GSN (50% stake with Sony Pictures);
- Atlanta Braves - after purchased from Time Warner in exchange for 60 million shares in Time Warner (pending approval of Major League Baseball).
- Starz Media - On May 2006, Liberty Media bought IDT Entertainment from IDT Corp. and renamed it Starz Media.
[edit] Former assets
- Court TV (50% stake with Time Warner). On May 12th,2006, Time Warner bought the other 50% of Court TV for $735 million. [3]
[edit] History
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This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. |
It originated as part of TCI, an American cable television group, and acquired by AT&T in 1999 for $54 billion.
It was spun-off from AT&T in the second half of 2001, subsequently spending $5 billion on nine German regional cable networks. Apart from television distribution it holds major interests in other groups. For example it is the largest shareholder in News Corporation (though the founding Murdoch family owns more voting shares), and has a 4 % stake in Time Warner. As of December 2003 it has never paid a dividend.
In May 2006, Time Warner acquired Liberty Media's 50% stake in Court TV for $735 million.
On May 16, 2006, IDT sold its IDT Entertainment division to Liberty Media for "for all of Liberty Media's interests in IDT, $186 million in cash and the assumption of existing indebtedness." IDT Entertainment's assets and Starz Entertainment Group's popular line of premium TV channels will combine to produce content for all distribution platforms. [4]
Liberty is in the process of considering asset swaps with News Corp. and Time Warner that would give it control of DirecTV and the Atlanta Braves baseball team. [5] On February 12, 2007, the deal was completed with Time Warner wherein Liberty would receive the Atlanta Braves, a group of craft magazines and $1 billion in cash in exchange for 60 million shares of Time Warner stock (valued at $1.27 billion as of market close on February 12, 2007). [6] The deal is now pending the formal approval of Major League Baseball.
Liberty has also purchased Green Bay, Wisconsin, television station WFRV-TV and its sister station in Escanaba, Michigan, WJMN-TV, from CBS estimated at about $234 million. CBS will swap the stations and $170 million in cash for 7.59 million shares of CBS common stock held by Liberty Media. The purchase was announced February 13, 2007, and is expected to close in June.
[edit] Governance
Members of the board of Liberty Media are: Robert S. Bennett, Donne Fisher, Paul Gould, Greg Maffei, John Malone, David Rapley, LaVoy Robison, and Larry Romrell.
