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Sky’s Rising Share Price Pressures Rupert Murdoch To Close BSkyB Deal

By TIM ADLER in London | Thursday January 27, 2011 @ 3:31am PSTTags: BSkyB, BSkyB Profits, News Corp, News Corp BSkyB Takeover, Rupert Murdoch BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch Sky TV, SKY Finance, Sky News

City analysts think News Corp could be forced to pay up to £10.2bn ($16.2bn) for the 61% of BSkyB it doesn’t own. Sky’s shares rose by 11% after announcing strong first-half results this morning. Pre-tax profits at BSkyB rose to £467m in the last six months of 2010, with revenues up 15% to £3.2bn. Rupert Murdoch has flown into London to personally oversee negotiations with the British government. City analysts predict that, with results as good as these, the longer the deal is delayed, the more BSkyB’s share price will rise – and the more News Corp will be forced to pay. Its offer of 700p per share, valuing the deal at £7.5bn, has already been rejected. News Corp is sitting on a £5.42 billion cash pile. The pressure will be on to close the deal before News Corp shareholders question whether the company can really afford it. RBS, the City investment bank, tells me it expects the Sky deal will go through before June. “News Corp wants the deal to close asap and will work with the regulator to achieve that,” says Paul Richards, director of equity research at Numis.

Murdoch’s arrival comes during a week when his News Corporation has become the news, rather than reporting on it. First, there’s UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt giving the Murdochs more time to come up with ways to reduce News Corp’s media influence if he allows the deal to go through. Hunt said he is minded to refer the proposed BSkyB deal to the Competition Commission if News Corp can’t come up with anything new. Second, there’s the ever-deepening phone hacking scandal at tabloid The News of the World – this morning it was revealed that a reporter had been listening to the voicemail of Sienna Miller’s mother-in-law only last year, despite News Corp swearing it had stamped phone hacking out. News International, the newspaper arm, is desperately trying to cut out any bad apples there. A news editor was fired on Wednesday. And two soccer TV pundits have lost their jobs from Sky’s sports channel for making sexist comments. Not the best of weeks for Rupe.

There’s another wrinkle too. News Corp has already offered to spin off Sky News to avoid a referral to the Competition Commission. Sky News loses £40m a year a year, which, on the face of it, doesn’t make it very attractive. However, I understand that News Corp would guarantee to buy Sky News’s output for at least 10 years. A guaranteed income steam would make Sky News very attractive for any buyer. The rub is that Hunt may insist News Corp spins off Sky News before the deal goes through. And BSkyB’s board will turn the screws on News Corp, extracting the best offer it can, as the price of its cooperation.

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Sky Gets 10M Subscribers Ahead Of Sked

By TIM ADLER in London | Monday November 8, 2010 @ 5:36am PSTTags: BSkyB Finance, James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch BSkyB, SKY Finance, Sky Rupert Murdoch, UK Pay TV, UK TV

No wonder Rupert Murdoch is so keen to own BSkyB outright. Having invested so heavily in technology, from digital switch-over right through to 3D, Murdoch wants to reap his investment. Sky’s annual turnover in its last financial year to June 2010 was £5.9 billion. It’s estimated this will grow to … Read More »

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Puttnam: Murdoch Takeover “Extremely Damaging To Informed Democratic Debate”

By TIM ADLER in London | Friday November 5, 2010 @ 12:15am PDTTags: David Puttnam, David Puttnam Channel 4, James Murdoch, News Corp BSkyB, News Corp BSkyB Takeover, Ofcom, Rupert Murdoch BSkyB, Sky, SKY Finance, UK Media Rupert Murdoch, UK TV

Speaking in the House of Lords, the UK equivalent of the Senate, David Puttnam said that News Corp’s bid to take control of BSkyB posed a threat to democracy. Here are excerpts from the speech given by the one-time Columbia Pictures boss:

My Lords… I had the honour of entering your Lordships House thirteen years ago tomorrow. Since that time there have been three or four really big issues with which I’ve consistently tried to engage – in part because they relate to experiences gained in my former life, but also because I believe they represent the type of issues upon which rests the future of the type of society most of us would wish to live in… My Lords, the purpose of this afternoon’s debate is to draw attention to the possibility that we are on the edge of a very slippery slope – one that could find us falling further and further under the influence of a single, US-based owner, with a highly questionable interest in the benefits of a diverse and flourishing plural media here in the United Kingdom. So why this debate, and why now?

The primary reason My Lords is that News Corporation yesterday notified the European Commission of its intention to purchase the 61% of BSkyB that it does not presently own. As I’ve already mentioned, this morning we heard the welcome news that this proposal had been referred by the Secretary of State, to Ofcom. It’s my most sincere hope that the Coalition’s proposed ‘trimming’ of Ofcom’s powers will not result in any diminution of its capacity to exercise those powers in respect of important matters such as this.

There, are of course, a number of aspects to media plurality – notably the Government’s proposals to repeal the local “cross-media” ownership laws, but this afternoon I only have time to focus on the really big issue resulting from News Corporation’s power, reach and influence. It’s my contention that if regulators and legislators in Europe and the UK remain supine, and simply wave this proposed acquisition through, the consequences for the citizens, as well as the political class in this country could become deeply troubling. The purchase of these shares would give News Corporation an unprecedented level of control over the UK media, one that to my mind has the potential to be extremely damaging, not just in respect of media plurality, but to informed democratic debate as a whole.

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News Corp’s Sky Pays Rupert’s Daughter Liz Murdoch 40% Less For TV Shows

By TIM ADLER in London | Wednesday September 8, 2010 @ 3:54am PDTTags: BSkyB, Jeremy Darroch, Liz Murdoch, Liz Murdoch Shine, News Corp Shine Group, Shine Group, Shine Group Finance, SKY Finance

BSkyB paid Liz Murdoch’s Shine Group £6 million ($9.3 million) for programming last year, the company said in its annual report. That is 40% less than the £10 million it paid Murdoch, sister of non-executive chairman James Murdoch, and … Read More »

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BBC Boss Mark Thompson To Lay Into Sky

By TIM ADLER in London | Friday August 27, 2010 @ 4:00am PDTTags: BBC Finance, BBC Mark Thompson, Mactaggart Lecture, Mark Thompson, Mark Thompson Mactaggart Lecture, Sky, SKY Finance, Sky UK Broadcasting

Thompson will attack Sky tonight during his Mactaggart lecture speech at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. Thompson will point to the vast scale of Sky and its influence over the UK broadcasting industry. He will compare the £2 … Read More »

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Sky To Become HBO’s Home In Britain

By TIM ADLER in London | Thursday July 29, 2010 @ 2:59am PDTTags: Big Love, BSkyB Finance, Dustin Hoffman, Entourage, Game of Thrones, HBO, HBO Boardwalk Empire, HBO Sky Deal, Luck, Martin Scorsese, Pay TV Channels, Sky, SKY Finance, Sky HBO, Sopranos, UK Pay TV, UK TV

The pay-TV giant has struck an exclusive output deal to be the only place to watch HBO shows from now on. Boardwalk Empire, Martin Scorsese’s series about Atlantic City gangsters, will be the first show to air through the … Read More »

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