Bennett
Liberty Media CEO Robert Bennett reiterated Tuesday that the company wants a controlling stake in Vivendi Universal's U.S. entertainment assets, including music. He said the same thing to investors at a conference in Gotham last month, but indicated that a package including music might make a deal problematic.
He said Liberty would "certainly want to be the dominant economic shareholder in the transaction, so there will be no one larger from a governance point of view." But he anticipates Liberty will have to contend with other bidders. There's already a formal offer on the table from a consortium led by Marvin Davis.
Speaking at the Salomon Smith Barney media conference in La Quinta, Calif., Bennett also said he's "reasonably optimistic" that Liberty and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will wind up bidding jointly for Hughes Electronics' satcaster DirecTV. The statement was more conciliatory than Bennett's December comments, which said Liberty might make a solo run for DirecTV.
Reps from News Corp., Liberty and Hughes parent GM met in New York last week for exploratory talks, but the would-be buyers emerged with little satisfaction. "Who knows what GM wants to do," said one News Corp. insider.
News Corp. and Liberty want to buy GM's 30% stake in Hughes, which would cost an estimated $5 billion. Splitting the deal makes it cheaper and would still likely leave News Corp. with management control of the asset. "Malone never wants control," one Wall Streeter noted.
Liberty, controlled by John Malone, owns 18% of News Corp.
Separately Tuesday, General Motors chief financial officer John Devine said the auto giant isn't counting on a DirecTV sale to meet its targets for raising cash in 2003. But he said GM does expect to get as much cash from any potential transaction as the $4.2 billion it would have raied through the aborted sale of the satcaster to EchoStar.
"There's always more than one option," Devine said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the Detroit Auto Show.
Those also include potentially hanging onto DirecTV and its Hughes operating unit, the CFO added.
A day earlier, GM's CEO Richard Wagoner acknowledged that selling Hughes would "generate cash and further strengthen our balance sheet." He said he will have a better idea of GM's plans for Hughes in two to three months.
Contact Jill Goldsmith at
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