Lastminute.com receives a bid approach 11 May 2005 A takeover of the online travel group will bring to an end one of the most entertaining business sagas of the last decade. The online travel group built an iconic brand, a large customer base and huge transaction volumes, but has never managed a profit.
Malcontents go after controversial IPOs 4 May 2005 Lazard and Warner Music are being publicly bashed by neglected interest groups. A bit of bad publicity probably won't scupper either IPO. But it won't help much either.
BSkyB grows – but at a cost 4 May 2005 The UK payTV company added more subscribers in the latest quarter than expected. But churn is rising and revenues per user are falling.
Reuters almost turns the corner 20 Apr 2005 But not yet. Recurring revenues are still falling, if at a slower rate. The group says it may even report flat sales this year. Yet anyone who hopes for more may be disappointed. Reuters turnaround remains a work of years.
Banks find ECM deals tough even without competition 18 Apr 2005 Take JPMorgan s E2.1bn Mediaset placement. The bank may have lost money on the sale even though the business was not auctioned. Why did JPMorgan take the risk? One theory is that it was trying to sew up the advisory business of Fininvest, the selling shareholder.
Instinet a big morsel for Nasdaq to swallow 15 Apr 2005 Even if it geared itself up to the gills, it will be a big stretch for Nasdaq to buy all of Instinet for cash. As a result, Reuters may not get the clean exit many of its shareholders have expected from the sale.
Berlusconi sells 17% of Mediaset 13 Apr 2005 Italy's PM, long criticised for his hold over the country s TV, may be trying to win back political favour after his recent dismal showing. His timing is good: Mediaset is up 18% this year. But the E2.1bn sale will barely loosen his grip on the TV group, since he keeps 34%.
Spanish M&A delirium infects cable firms 18 Mar 2005 The bidding game has turned hallucinatory. Almost everyone is trying to buy almost everyone else. The result has been an impasse. But ONO s E2.5bn offer for Auna s cable assets may break the logjam. Its bid is the simplest permutation so far.
Big media embraces new fashion – splitting up 17 Mar 2005 First Liberty, and now Viacom, plan to split themselves in two. AOL Time Warner is another candidate ripe for similar treatment. But the breakup of these conglomerates doesn t herald a new world where small is beautiful. They are simply preludes to further deals.
Bronfman set to double his money with Warner Music IPO 17 Mar 2005 It takes pluck, skill and a fair amount of luck for anyone in today s music industry to more than double their money in just one year. But that is what Edgar Bronfman Jnr and his private equity partners hope to do when they float Warner Music later this year.
Walt Disney names Bob Iger as boss 13 Mar 2005 The choice of the US group's operational boss isn't surprising. It leaves lingering worries that outgoing boss Eisner scared off candidates. But Iger s role in helping to revive ABC, combined with Eisner s vow not to seek the chairmanship, mitigates these concerns.
Two cheers for Trinity Mirror chief Sly Bailey 3 Mar 2005 The UK newspaper group has turned in its biggest profits in four years, upped the dividend and is to buy back stock. Yet though the share price has almost doubled under Bailey, she has yet to solve the group s biggest problem: falling circulation.
Telefonica’s plan to partially list Endemol is odd 2 Mar 2005 Investors would have preferred a trade sale, rather than this half eviction of the Dutch TV firm that produces "Big Brother". But the Spanish telecoms giant may have had to choose this route after it found it harder to sell Endemol that it hoped.
Stevenson to step down at Pearson 27 Feb 2005 Shares in the educational publishing group are barely above their level eight years ago when Stevenson first became chairman. Now his successor will be left to face the tough decisions, including whether to look for a new strategy and a new chief executive.
Reuters moves from tipping to turning point 16 Feb 2005 The good news is that revenue decline has slowed to a crawl. The information company may even grow sales this year, at last. The bad news is that the stock s growth rating already reflects such hopes, and more. Investors may be disappointed.
Man Utd sends odd signals over Glazer bid 10 Feb 2005 The board ought to be snapping Glazer s hand off given the price he s paying. But it is actually setting obstacles in his path. The reason? The board is afraid of upsetting supporters. Another reason why football clubs are a lousy investment.
Time for Manchester United to take its PIK 7 Feb 2005 The football club rejected Malcolm Glazer's first takeover offer because it involved too much debt. Glazer has now come back with an alternative. Instead of debt, he's suggesting a rare kind of security payinkind preferred stock.
EMI slashes forecast for music sales 7 Feb 2005 It partly blames delayed album releases. But this will jolt investors who thought the recorded music business was stabilising. The music group has gone from predicting flatto4% down recorded music sales to a thumping 9% fall just weeks before the year end.
Murdoch Jr pulls out the stops at BSkyB 2 Feb 2005 The British payTV company is growing faster than most expected. The growth is profitable too. The stock has now recovered to £6 where it was when James Murdoch shocked investors with his growth plan. It will struggle to exceed that.
Google’s growth is slowing 2 Feb 2005 While growth at the internet search company still astounds, the rate of sales increase is consistently slowing. But Google s $57bn market capitalisation doesn't price in much of a slowdown.