Malone
John Malone's Liberty Media, which owns a 4% nonvoting stake in Time Warner, said Wednesday it has asked the Federal Trade Commission to convert its shares into voting stock before a previously set date of February 2007.
The restriction was put in place in 1997, when Malone was a major owner of cable systems through Tele-Communications Inc. TCI was at that time a competitor to Time Warner Cable. TCI was subsequently acquired by AT&T and then by Comcast. Liberty no longer owns any cable operations.
"Liberty aims to convert its Time Warner stake to voting shares early to enable us to participate in key shareholders votes and actions," said Liberty CEO-elect Greg Maffei in a statement.
He said Liberty is "pleased with the steps Time Warner has recently taken to enhance shareholder value, including the acceleration of its share repurchase program, and looks forward to additional actions."
Late last week, Time Warner and corporate raider Carl Icahn announced a settlement after months of bickering over TW's strategy and steps the conglom was taking to boost the stock price. Icahn agreed not to challenge Time Warner's board for re-election at the company's annual meeting in May.
Time Warner promised to boost its stock buyback to $20 billion from $12.5 billion, appoint two new independent directors and continue to cut costs.
Contact Jill Goldsmith at
jill.goldsmith@variety.com