Liberty Global buys Virgin Media

[xxMATTGxx]

John Malone's Liberty Global Inc struck a deal to buy British cable group Virgin Media for about $15.75 billion, a move that would put the U.S. billionaire up against old rival Rupert Murdoch.

Libert and Virgin said in a statement on Tuesday that under the terms of the deal, Virgin Media shareholders will receive $17.50 in cash, 0.2582 Liberty Global class A shares and 0.1928 Liberty Global class C shares for each Virgin Media share. Using Tuesday's closing prices for those shares, that implies a value of $47.02 for each Virgin Media share.

Virgin Media is the second-biggest pay-TV provider in Britain behind Murdoch's satellite group BSkyB

Source 1: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91501B20130206

Source 2: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/l...-23-3-billion/

[peteyt]

Never heard of Liberty Global. I do wonder if they bought Virgin Media would they put more fiber cables down

[mrwoooooooo]

Never heard of them either, let's hope they don't change too much

[xxMATTGxx]

They've been in the cable business for quite some time. People from Ireland or other countries in Europe may know them by "UPC Broadband"

[Reloaded]

Good move for both sides.

[Stephen!]

American cable company = More caps

[David]

free stuff please

[dbgtz]

Urg I see Virgin Media (or whatever it will be called) going downhill.

[xxMATTGxx]

Urg I see Virgin Media (or whatever it will be called) going downhill.

They are keeping the Virgin Media name, the Virgin Group will still own 3% of it.

[xxMATTGxx]

Some people may find this interesting:

http://www.lgi.com/PDF/presentations...estor-Call.pdf


Taken this from another forum:

Neil Berkett to leave, his wish, once the deal is done. Liberty keen to retain the rest of the vm board and use their expertise across the combined group.

Combined company will be world's largest cableco, bigger than Comcast.

Liberty broadly intend to leave vm alone, they won't be changing vm's network, or trying to merge vm's tech with other european operations.

Liberty will use vm's expertise in mobile/quad play across the combined business.

Liberty Global and Vm will become a new UK based company, with HQ still in US and listed on nasdaq.

Liberty to put $3 billion additional debt onto vm's books.....its tax efficient, so they say, for them to do it.

Liberty agree with vm's strategy of not bidding for premium content.

Webcast very interesting. A very good presentation from Liberty's boss Mike Fries, a cool, calm person and his 50th birthday today. He called the vm deal "a nice present".

I think and despite what was said in the webcast, its far too early to see what the impact will be on vm and for us as customers.

As Fries said, Liberty do not have a major pressence in the UK, so its not like the ntl/telewest merger, or previous cableco mergers. As far as the UK goes, there's nothing to merge. The wider picture, though, is unclear.

Fries pointed that the European market is fragmented and underperforming and I believe he intends to use VM as best practice across all of Liberty's operations in Europe. As an example, Liberty has a lot of analogue subscribers and they're keen to learn from virgin how vm did things here.

US billionaire John Malone, major shareholder in Liberty, arch rival to Murdoch, had little to say.

To all, intents and purposes, Fries is now VM boss and in charge of UK cableco but whatever name it will be called. He said the VM name will remain but of course he also said that Liberty will redomocile to the UK and become a subsidary of a new, as yet unnamed company.

I think, long term, Liberty's operations will come under one brand, whether that be Virgin (I think not), UPC, Cablecom, Unity Media etc time will tell.

Liberty keen to buy more european assets.