Is Malone Planning To Launch A Premium Pay TV Channel On Liberty's Cable Networks?

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Oh Hell you make him sound like another Murdoch..

He is, if not worse.

He's a media magnate who once owned the largest US cable company. His other media assets are enormous and he is the largest private landowner in the US. He is utterly ruthless and thinks of making even more money left, right and centre. He especially likes to fianance everything with a sea of debt and doesn't pay tax.

How isn't he like Murdoch?

---------- Post added at 18:54 ---------- Previous post was at 18:40 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Just as a point Liberty does not own all of Charter, it owns 26%.

I am pretty intrigued to see how Liberty Broadband, market cap $5.5 billion, acquire Time Warner Cable, market cap $41.79 billion, even with help from Liberty Global, market cap across all share classes $45.26 billion, and leveraging Charter Communications whose market cap is $20.82 billion.

I suspect a whole bunch of debt secured on the new entity alongside paying largely in shares would be the plan. It'd end up more of a merger than a full on acquisition.

Talk about having to throw the kitchen sink at the deal - Comcast is as of now valued at $150.76 billion so could've relatively comfortably assimilated TWC.

Malone finances everything with debt, which in turn enables him to pay no tax. How exactly he will arrange this deal, I have no idea. I am as intrigued as you as to how he can keep making these deals and get away with it, but he does.

As for the point about Liberty only owning 26% of Charter. I've said in many threads that Malone has de facto control of whatever company he takes a large stake in, case in point Discovery.

I cannot prove it, but he seems to work in tandem with the Newhouse family who own another media company called Advance. Advance are a large shareholder in Discovery and Charter and the agreement they seem to have gives Malone de facto control of the companies.

Originally Posted by Horizon

He is, if not worse.

He's a media magnate who once owned the largest US cable company. His other media assets are enormous and he is the largest private landowner in the US. He is utterly ruthless and thinks of making even more money left, right and centre. He especially likes to fianance everything with a sea of debt and doesn't pay tax.

How isn't he like Murdoch?

---------- Post added at 18:54 ---------- Previous post was at 18:40 ----------

Malone finances everything with debt, which in turn enables him to pay no tax. How exactly he will arrange the deal, I have no idea. I am as intrigued as you as to how he can keep making these deals and get away with it, but he does.

As for the point about Liberty only owning 26% of Charter. I've said in many threads that Malone has de facto control of whatever company he takes a large stake in, case in point Discovery.

I cannot prove it, but he seems to work in tandem with the Newhouse family who own another media company called Advance. Advance are a large shareholder in Discovery and Charter and the agreement they seem to have gives Malone de facto control of the companies.

He is actually a pleasant person, he visits the uk occasionally to give his views on where the Cable TV markets and technologies are heading.

[Horizon]

....being pleasant personally has nothing to do with him as a businessman. He doesn't get to be a billionaire by being a pleasant businessman.

Do a search for TCI, his old US cable company, and look at all the complaints from customers who were stuck with old cable boxes that barely worked. He calls it sweating the assets.

Anyway, this thread isn't about whether he is nice or not. It's about him rebuilding him media empire up one last time.

By the way, I met Rupert Murdoch near Embankment station in London twenty five years ago and he was extremely charming, as was Richard Branson. I met him around the same time on one of his planes as he went round handing out sweets to all the passengers. He chatted to every person on the plane. By the way, his kids were NOT flying first class.... He was asked about this several times and he explained that he would lose too much money having his family in premium seating... it was a transatlantic flight and they were toddler age...

They may all be "pleasant", but there is no way in hell I'd ever work for such a person and I'm not keen on them controlling too many companies either.

Originally Posted by Horizon

....being pleasant personally has nothing to do with him as a businessman. He doesn't get to be a billionaire, by being a pleasant businessman.

Do a search for TCI, his old US cable company, and look at all the complaints from customers who were stuck with old cable boxes that barely worked. He calls it sweating the assets.

Anyway, this thread isn't about whether he is nice or not. It's about him rebuilding him media empire up one last time.

My point was, he may be like Murdoch from a business perspective, but he is very different from a human perspective.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Mr Banana

My point was, he may be like Murdoch from a business perspective, but he is very different from a human perspective.

I judge people by how they treat others, including their employees.

I noticed on the Virgin flight that while all the passengers were happy and well looked after, I certainly was, it was noticeable that the staff were very uncomfortable. If Branson were such a "pleasant" person they wouldn't all have had ashen faces and looked like something just out of the morgue and that was just the ones with sun tans.

But I take your point, if someone is nice to you, of course you should be pleasant back.

---------- Post added at 20:21 ---------- Previous post was at 19:58 ----------

Back to Malone, and a rather insightful article in to how he, Murdoch, et all do business:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhodg...ommunications/

Originally Posted by Horizon

I judge people by how they treat others, including their employees.

I noticed on the Virgin flight that while all the passengers were happy and well looked after, I certainly was, it was noticeable that the staff were very uncomfortable. If Branson were such a "pleasant" person they wouldn't all have had ashen faces and looked like something just out of the morgue and that was just the ones with sun tans.

But I take your point, if someone is nice to you, of course you should be pleasant back.

---------- Post added at 20:21 ---------- Previous post was at 19:58 ----------

Back to Malone, and a rather insightful article in to how he, Murdoch, et all do business:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhodg...ommunications/

Yes am fully aware of all of this but he has done a hell of a job driving the LG share price and thats where my interests lie. Same for the VM employees on here as well I assume.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Mr Banana

Yes am fully aware of all of this but he has done a hell of a job driving the LG share price and thats where my interests lie. Same for the VM employees on here as well I assume.

You started off saying he was pleasant and ended saying you didn't care as you are more interested in the share price. Interesting thread.

Are Liberty shares your retirement or a large part of your investments?

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

You started off saying he was pleasant and ended saying you didn't care as you are more interested in the share price. Interesting thread.

Are Liberty shares your retirement or a large part of your investments?

Not sure I said I didn't care?

From a share perspective, I used to be into property and in 2007 someone gave me advice on share dealing and talked at length about where the telecoms sector was going, which in hindsight was the best advice I have ever been given.

At the time i bought the same value of shares in both Sky and VM but latterly I have be more interested in VM (LGI) I haven't retired (too young) but the LG shares have been very helpful in creating far more value than my pension ever would.

One of the things I like about this forum more than others is that you can gauge how customers feel about the business, there are also the odd tit bits that make you go and carry out further investigation, which may lead to buying at the right time.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Mr Banana

Not sure I said I didn't care?

From a share perspective, I used to be into property and in 2007 someone gave me advice on share dealing and talked at length about where the telecoms sector was going, which in hindsight was the best advice I have ever been given.

At the time i bought the same value of shares in both Sky and VM but latterly I have be more interested in VM (LGI) I haven't retired (too young) but the LG shares have been very helpful in creating far more value than my pension ever would.

One of the things I like about this forum more than others is that you can gauge how customers feel about the business, there are also the odd tit bits that make you go and carry out further investigation, which may lead to buying at the right time.

That is why it is drummed into us at work not to post information on forums about something that has not been released to the public yet.

[Horizon]

More speculation today from ISP Review that Vodafone and Liberty Global may join together:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...uk-parent.html

[Kushan]

I seen that. Even if it does happen, even if it was announced tomorrow, I don't see it being finalised and completed before the end of 2016 at the earliest.

[Horizon]

Telegraph article on it too: (behind a paywall, but it may work)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...erty-deal.html

[Pierre]

It's interesting and a different proposition from earlier rumours where a takeover of Liberty by Vodafone was mooted.

Here they are talking of spinning off the European operation from their global operations. The article says that this would value the Vodafone European operations at 30million, which is much, much less than Liberty. Liberty bought just VM for 23million.

This is basically Malone taking a punt out there and getting any potential deal on his terms.

It could happen, but it would depend if the Vodafone board have the stomach for it as it would essentially be Liberty buy out of Vodafone, not the other way around.

A lot of the investments house have the same view as you Pierre, whereas the main stream press seem to have missed what he was actually saying.

[Horizon]

I'm sure the Vodafone board have the stomach for a deal, but what they might not have the stomach for is Malone's loading debt onto more debt to pay for things. Vodafone don't believe in leverage.

It's clear Malone wants the deal as part of his ambition to create a global media giant, it's just whether Vodafone will tolerate his way of doing things. Of course, they could take the lead and merge his operations in with theirs.