Quote:
Originally Posted by jem
You know, I do vaguely remember hearing that there was some kind of legal shenanigans going on at the time and technically Telewest (the smaller company) actually bought NTL. Something to do with broadcast rights, although the merged company retained the NTL branding.
Possibly an urban myth.
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The October 2005 agreement envisaged NTL acquiring Telewest with Telewest shareholders to receive cash plus shares in the enlarged NTL. However Telewest owned TV channel Flextech which, with the BBC set up UKTV as a 50/50 joint venture to exploit the BBC's archives on multichannel TV through a range of commercial services, starting with UK Gold and three new launches: UK Style, UK Arena and UK Horizons.
If Telewest or Flextech were taken over or experienced a change in ultimate ownership, BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, would be entitled to buy Telewest's 50% of UKTV. But NTL was so keen to hang on to UKTV that it changed the terms of the merger to become a takeover by Telewest - meaning it was actually a reverse takeover of NTL by Telewest with NTL’s shareholders and Telewest's shareholders ending up owning approximately 75% and 25% respectively of the combined corporate entity. Immediately after the reverse takeover completed on 3 March 2006, the legal parent company was NTL Incorporated (formerly Telewest Global, Inc., which changed its name to NTL Incorporated as part of the transaction) but the combined business was branded/referred to publicly as “ntl:Telewest” for the period before the Virgin Media rebrand.
So, in effect NTL did buy Telewest but did it in a somewhat convoluted way.