Once upon a time, small and impoverished countries could still enjoy top quality TV programmes, even if it meant having to acquire most of them from abroad. This was because the value of these secondary rights reflected these countries capacity to pay and the basis on which the programme rights were sold and bought; by country. To […]
Continue reading
So the lynch mob is out and led by such political worthies as Keith Vaz. How can David Cameron do anything else but embrace the ‘popular’ frenzy that has been whipped up by Murdoch’s media rivals and fickle Westminster toadies. The BSkyB bid is of course now dead, or so we are reliably informed by Roland […]
Continue reading
Rebekah Brooks may have described the News of the World as being toxic, although one might well ask under whose watch this originated. Murdoch’s desperate attempts to distance himself and News Corps bid for BSkyB from the phone tapping (and worse) scandal by discarding the offending title, but retaining her however risks all of this. Not only […]
Continue reading
“Murdoch shutters the venerable ‘News of the Screws’” Was this an act of contrition for the phone tapping scandal or an act of desperation to secure regulatory (read political) approval for News Corporations bid for the outstanding shares in BSkyB? If so, will it work when the editor of the NoW at the time of these infractions […]
Continue reading
Hot on the heals of Thomson announcing its intention to sell its Healthcare operations, which primarily service US healthcare payers with infomation services to manage the ever spiralling costs of healthcare, Experian has today reported a purchase in the same space, albeit of a considerably smaller operation. Experian is paying $185m for Medical Present Value (MPV) which maintains […]
Continue reading
David Levin’s long term re-structuring of UBM to exit its declining legacy print businesses continues. Yesterday UBM announced that it is selling its UK entertainment and technology portfolio (including Music Week and Pro Sound News) to Intent Media. In itself, there is little of surprise as UBM exits this small segment which represented less than 4% […]
Continue reading
Unless one wants to lend to one of the PIIGS, cash returns are currently too low to tempt corporates to sit on excess cash. But what to do with it? For Thomson Reuters this issue will become increasingly pertinent following its announcement to divest its healthcare operations (c. $500m of sales and $100m of EBITA) which […]
Continue reading
The bottom line is that investors will have to take a massive leap of faith to get anywhere near the $20-25bn MV estimates that seem to floating around. And this doesn’t even include their aim to disenfranchise new equity by offering non-voting shares or the potential bad debt problem that could emerge from the explosive […]
Continue reading