The channel 4 link gives further information
Quote:
http://www.channel4.com/news/article...+stake/3511077
Sky won't have to sell all of their shares at once. It is likely to be given six months to do so, something that will be decided by Business Secretary Lord Mandelson. Ironically, he recently attacked Sky's largest shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, over its partiality.
Rumours in the city are that Sky may sell its stake to Channel Five's owner RTL. Something that I first suggested in 2007, although now unlike then, there are not rumours that it would be a straight forward swap.
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I wasn’t aware of RTL’s ownership of channel 5 , so I tried to see if there was some connection between RTL and SKY but there was nothing that jumped out other than RTL showing some SKY channels. However the owner of RTL, Bertelsmann AG itself has got it’s it’s fingers in a few pies not including music or publishing; see
http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=bertelsmann
A read of Bertelsmann on wikipedia is interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann shows;
Bertelsmann is not publicly listed, and is majority owned (76.9%) by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a non-profit organisation and
political think tank set up by the founding family Mohn.[2] The remaining 23.1% is owned by the Mohn Family. Albert Frère, a Belgian industrialist, owned 25% of Bertelsmann until 2006.
Bertelsmann currently consists of five corporate divisions and a forthcoming music division:[3]
RTL Group, Europe's biggest broadcaster Gruner + Jahr (a magazine publisher, the biggest in Europe)[4]
Random House, the world's largest trade book publisher (popular literature)
Direct Group, the world's largest book and music club group
Arvato AG, an international media and communications service provider
So although there may be reasons to be pleased about today’s announcement over the ITV shares, it seems to me that companies like Rupert Murdoch’s empire which is not shy at influencing public opinion and a political think giant Bertelsmann AG getting together in business, even in a relatively small way, may eventually be a reason for concern for all free thinkers. I don’t trust them.