The Spanish-language TV market in the US is attracting some serious bucks: Televisa Submits Revised Bid for TV Firm by Meg James Los Angeles Times 06/24/06. James reports:
Capping a chaotic week, Los Angeles billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio on Friday had a new bid in hand for Univision Communications Inc., even as another, earlier offer expired.
As expected, a group of investors led by Mexico's broadcasting behemoth Grupo Televisa submitted a bid of about $36 a share, or at least $11.2 billion, shortly before midnight Thursday.
But in assembling that bid, Televisa went through more partners than the Lotharios who populate the company's wildly popular telenovelas.
Both the Blackstone Group and the Carlyle Group had been partnered with Televisa but pulled out a few days ago, along with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The article mentions in its concluding paragraphs:
It is not clear why the three private equity firms got cold feet. Sources say they left because of a dispute over how much Televisa should bid. Televisa wanted to put in a big enough initial offer to clinch the deal, one source said.
Not only that, but major media companies that own English-language networks began making noise about possible conflicts of interest. The three private equity firms also were part of a consortium that last month bought Dutch media company VNU, which owns the U.S. television ratings firm Nielsen Media Research.
Nielsen is the sole firm that measures television audiences in the U.S. Some have questioned the appropriateness of having one group of investors own both the ratings company and some of the TV networks it measures.
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