Liberty Global PLC has announced that it is buying British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (LON:BSY) 6.4 percent stake in ITV plc (LON:ITV), Britain’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster. The recent move by Liberty Global PLC is a major step forward in moving to the mainstream of content production. Discussing this announcement in a program, Bloomberg’s Matthew Campbel said that this stake acquisitions can certainly turn into a full acquisition.
“Well, they are getting a stake in ITV which is small, 6-7% but ITV plc (LON: ITV) is increasingly very important producer of content, Downton Abbey, The X-Factor, these are all big names that ITV produces, actually as John Malone, who runs Liberty Global, tries to get exposed more to content, this is not such a bad place to be, now the question is, does this ever turn into a full takeover,” said Campbel.
Campbel said that this stake acquisition can turn into a full take over because there are examples in the past when media companies buy small stakes in order to get a small market penetration and with the passage of time, these small share acquisitions turn into a complete merger or acquisition.
He said that there is a lot of activity going on in the market and many companies are making desperate moves to make a solid space in the emerging media market canvas
“We have Comcast buying Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC), which is not related to the Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX), the content producer, we have AT&T Inc (NYSE:T) buying DIRECTV (NASDAQ:DTV), we also potentially have a mobile merger coming in the US, Sprint and T-Mobile, so there is a huge re-alignment going on in all this tech and media industries that is gonna spread to Europe as well,” said Campbel.
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