mergers
Liberty Media CEO John Malone
told the Financial Times his company is ready to swap its $1.42 billion stake in Time Warner in order to acquire AOL's dialup business. There's just one holdup. "Time Warner still needs to divide the business," Malone complained to the FT. Though it's been more than two years since Time Warner decided to turn AOL into an online advertising concern and abandon the Internet service provider business, AOL won't be completely split until early 2009. Malone isn't the only exec impatient for Time Warner's book keepers to hurry it up. AOL CEO Randy Falco was
overheard last week griping: "When is New York going to sell us?"
time warner
During a conference call to reports Liberty Media's second-quarter earnings,
CEO John Malone told analysts the company was open to exchanging its stake in Time Warner for AOL's online access business. Liberty owns 103 million Time Warner shares, or about 2.8 percent of the company. Such a swap would value AOL's access business at around $1.6 billion, lower than the $2 billion to $3 billion analysts say its worth. A swap would lower Time Warner's tax burden, however, possibly making the deal more attractive. Earlier this year, Liberty performed a similar swap with News Corp., trading its stake in the company for control over DirecTV.
acquisitions
Lexico, the company behind reference sites like Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com,
has been acquired by also-ran search engine Ask.com, a unit of Barry Diller's IAC, for an undisclosed sum. It will mean an 11 percent boost in traffic for Ask and more revenue for Lexico's sites, as Google had cut a special deal with IAC for a higher revenue share than it would give to the likes of Dictionary.com. Possibly tipping their hand about future moves, Ask CEO Jim Safka told the AP the site was also looking to improve results related to health and entertainment, presumably through more acquisitions. The move comes after
IAC's Barry Diller settled a fight with Liberty's John Malone, a major IAC shareholder, over plans to split the company into five different parts.
lawsuits
Score one for the bitter old queen. Barry Diller, battling with major IAC shareholder John Malone in court, has
won the right to break up IAC without
interference from Malone's Liberty. This solves one problem for Diller, but creates another. Instead of running one hodgepodge of Internet businesses, he'll have
five of them to worry about. Sparring with Malone, a business ally turned enemy, will look simple compared to regaining Wall Street's affections.
leaks
Internet mogul Barry Diller is locked in a battle with former cable baron John Malone for control over IAC, and he told his staff last night to expect the case to go to court this week. Writes a tipster:
Barry sent out an email to corporate last night saying the case will be this week, everything will be fine, iac's stock been doing really well thanks to everyone at IAC corporate etc. I don't have a copy but if you know someone there who can get you one, might be interesting to read in a Dr. Pangloss kind of way.
PaidContent got a
copy of the candid Candide. Diller's email:
More »
exits
Barry Diller's battle with Liberty Media head John Malone for control over IAC could be over in a week, Diller
told a crowd at a Variety event yesterday. "It's very odd that two people who don't want to give up control of anything are giving control to a judge in Delaware," he said. "The wonderful thing about Delaware is they do it quickly. They make a decision quickly."
Some shareholders might wish for the same alacrity from Diller.
iac
Having borrowed his empire, Barry Diller is now living on borrowed time. Former cable baron John Malone's Liberty Media is
trying to break the sophisticated financial arrangements which give Diller control over IAC, his online conglomerate. Diller
calls the effort "insane," "hogwash." But here's the reality: Diller owns 28 percent of the company, while Liberty owns 24 percent, according to the company's
most recent proxy statement. Liberty, however, controls nearly 60 percent of the company's voting stock. Diller, in turn, has the right to vote Liberty's shares. This complicated entanglement is what Liberty and Diller are fighting about. Far more interesting than the legalisms is what it shows about Diller — and why Diller's so unhappy about it.
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iac
Word now comes that Liberty, former cable baron John Malone's company, has
opportunistically paid $340 million for 14 million shares in Barry Diller's IAC, raising its stake to 30 percent. IAC, too, repurchased 6 million shares at the same time. That means that Diller must have begrudgingly consented to the sale; at the same time, he reached an agreement that prevented Malone from taking a bigger stake in the online conglomerate. But who was the seller?
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iac
Telecom mogul John Malone has been putting the squeeze on his old buddy Barry Diller, who runs IAC. So what does Diller do?
Break his search and e-commerce conglomerate into five parts. Diller's sticking with the new IAC, which will mostly consist of the Ask.com search engine — oh, and Jakob Lodwick, too. HSN, Ticketmaster, LendingTree, and Interval International are getting spun off. We just want to know who's getting stuck with the bill for IAC's new headquarters in Chelsea.
Valleywag
The fight between John Malone and Barry Diller is getting brutal. As Diller prepares to spin off several businesses, leaving a company focused on the Oakland-based Ask.com search engine, Malone's Liberty Media has asked a court to remove Diller from IAC's board and allow Liberty to appoint several board members, in an effort to seize control of the company. Liberty owns 30 percent of IAC, and holds 62 percent of the voting rights, but an agreement allows Diller to vote Liberty's shares, giving him effective control of the company. [WSJ]
