Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

The suggestion I've seen is that it will leave Liberty Global with a similar footprint to that of Vodafone...

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

These two will likely combine at some point and as I said earlier in the thread, merge together with Malone's US companies.

Eventually an even bigger fish (Apple??) will come along and swallow the lot whole once Malone has done all the work of bringing various content and network companies together.

---------- Post added at 23:36 ---------- Previous post was at 23:31 ----------

This was from the first page of this thread and I've changed my mind on this now. If Malone was going to buy ITV, he would've done it by now. He's got much bigger fish to catch now, then again, he did get that ITV stake for a reason...perhaps I shouldn't rule out ITV getting bought, but as I said before, I reckon it would be somebody like Disney.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Virgin Media gives away £100 vouchers in flash sale on Full House TV bundles.


https://www.cable.co.uk/news/virgin-...ale-700002082/

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

So, Liberty Global is set to float its interests outside Europe (aka LILAC), sell its Austrian business to Deutsche Telekom and thereby put itself in pole position to combine with Vodafone. Interesting times in 2018!
https://www.ft.com/content/08f7f89a-...9-0191e45377ec

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Yes, I was meaning to publish Dear John's latest goings on myself. That FT article is a premium one, but the story is mentioned in this Telegraph article: (and other articles too)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/...est-manoeuvre/

Malone was interviewed by CNBC last month and he basically said his cable assets are up for sale if a suitable buyer comes along and he was approached by four companies but refused to name one of them. I think we know who that is!

Here's a snippet of that interview:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/john...r-charter.html

Here's a long interview he did last year which I found very interesting:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/11/1...interview.html

In other news, Malone has also bought a higher share in Discovery today, a company he controls, albeit indirectly already:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/17/libe...ery-stock.html

He's starting to look quite frail now which is not surprising as he is in his 80s and he clearly wants to finish his consolidation of his empire, then sell the lot to the highest bidder.

He's also buying full control of HSN, Home Shopping Network, perhaps he'll merge it with QVC.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Latest business news:


Vodafone eyes European expansion with Liberty Global deal


http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42921619

Purchase of assets, merger or takeover - any offers?

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

A different article I saw yesterday mentioned the UK, but the BBC article doesn't.

If the assets swaps are in countries where they both have assets, the UK is clearly one of them.

Liberty Global's full year results are out in a few weeks, so perhaps we might find out then, although normally they don't talk about this sort of stuff.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Makes it even more intriguing.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

The FT front page article on this today specifically rules out VM being part of the deal.

Malone has spent all this time buying separate European cable cos, only to split them off again and sell them. Doesn't make sense at all.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Worth more together than individually?

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

That sounds right - Vodafone says the talks are regarding continental european assets, so presumably not VM.
http://tools.eurolandir.com/tools/Pr...code=uk-vod&v=

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

I've not heard of any asset swaps, just Liberty selling assets in some European countries to Vodafone.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

So what do we reckon will happen here? Is this Liberty selling most of their European cable business' to Vodafone like UPC and keeping VM for themselves? Perhaps as a possible prelude to merging VM with with their American companies. Don't forget Malone now controls Scripps, the owner of UKTV (Dave, UK Gold etc) or will. That deal hasn't finalised yet.

I don't get what his thinking is here.

Malone and Fries constantly talk about scale. They have that with their European operations, but unlike America, their European cable cos operate in different countries, different languages, laws etc etc. Perhaps they are just tired of running such disparately operations, but why buy them in the first place?

Perhaps they just want to concentrate on the English speaking world and sod everything else??

I think we need to keep an eye on the wider media landscape too here as Malone was talking to Viacom and CBS last year about a possible deal between them.

At the moment, Viacom and CBS are talking about merging back together again, so perhaps ultimately the new CBS/Viacom may become part of Malone's empire at some point.

Everyone is worried about Amazon, Netflix, Apple and Facebook. It's why Mudoch has sold out.

Malone now has significant media interests, but they are still much smaller than the new Disney to be, the new AT&T/Time Warner company (when that happens) Comcast/NBC and the likes of Amazon haven't really yet put all their tanlks on the field yet, they will..

Here's a quick reminder of what Malone de facto controls, if not owns:

Virgin Media
all3media (one of the UK's largest production houses) which makes stuff like Midsomer Murders, Hollyoaks and Wolf Hall.

Discovery
Eurosport
Scripps - the owner of UKTV
F1
Charter - the 2nd biggest cable co in America
Starz
OVC and HSN
a share of Lionsgate and not forgetting almost 10% of ITV.

and that's just the main stuff. If that were all merged together, that would be significant in itself, but merge all that with Viacom/CBS or someone else and you have an aboslute global goliath.

If that were to happen, expect a ITV-Ch5 merger soon afterwards.

Still no mobile deal, yet.

---------- Post added at 21:29 ---------- Previous post was at 21:07 ----------

And just from my predecessor thread to this one, thread here:

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...6#post35780236

A few posts from there:

My thinking here is, and there were numerous posts about it from others in my old thread, as Vodafone is being squeezed in the UK where once it was dominate, could it sell its UK operation to Malone?

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

Vodafone is looking to expand in the UK not shrink. There are two viable options for Vodafone when it comes to buying a competitor Virgin Media and TalkTalk. Both have established customer bases with full quadplay service offering, and would be relatively easy to integrate into the VFUK operation. If VF doesn't get hold of Virgin Media, then they will go after TalkTalk as that is a business ready to be bought, spending little under £2bn would net Vodafone 4m+ customers compared to the probably £15-£17bn needed for VM.

Re: John Malone/Liberty/VM General News Thread
 

I know what Vodafone want, including considering launching their own pay tv service, but where once they were dominate in their field, they're now the number three player.

Lets not forget 5g. Mobile companies need fibre networks to help them power their mobile networks if we're all going to download hd/4k films onto mobile devices in seconds. VM has a fibre network, so does Talktalk, albeit a smaller one.

I don't see TalkTalk surviving much longer in any case after their data breach, so Vodafone could in theory buy both of them.