Liberty Media agreed to buy a 27 percent stake in...
Liberty Media agreed to buy a 27 percent stake in Charter in a deal worth about $2.6 billion, the companies said. The deal will give Liberty Chairman John Malone and its president, Greg Maffei, a seat each on Charter’s board.…
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Liberty reached the deal with existing Charter investors Apollo Management, Oaktree Capital Management and Crestview Partners, it said. Liberty may increase its stake in Charter up to 35 percent by 2016 and up to 40 percent after that, according to documents filed with the SEC (http://bit.ly/YmSEXc). The deal probably won’t trigger any FCC review because there are not license transfers involved, said a cable attorney not involved in the transaction. But local and state governments sometimes review transactions involving non-controlling interests and telecommunications operations, said the lawyer. A Charter spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to our query regarding whether any such review would be triggered. Missouri, one state where Charter operates, has no such statewide review for such deals, a spokesperson said. Stock analysts said they expect Charter to become a consolidator with Liberty’s financial backing. “Liberty has been looking for a use of its cash for some time and had previously not found any attractive assets at attractive prices,” Evercore Partners’ Bryan Kraft wrote investors. “John Malone has built the largest cable company in the world today” in Liberty Global, which operates entirely overseas, Kraft said. “Scale is important in the cable business, something that is clearly apparent to Liberty.”