The first European multinational pay TV is born: BSkyB will buy 100% of Sky Italy and 57,4% of Sky Germany. The agreement was reached yesterday between the British group and the Fox, controlled by Newscorp di Rupert Murdoch. However, this is not a real divorce, since the Australian tycoon also holds the majority stake (39,5%) of BSkyB itself.
British television will pay £2,45 billion (approx 3 billion euros) for Murdoch's Italian company and £2,9 billion (3,7 billion euros) for the majority stake in Sky Deutschland.
On German TV, BSkyB will also launch an offer to minority shareholders to buy the rest of the company at €6,75 per share. If the operation were to go through, the value of the transaction would come close to 7 billion pounds (8,85 billion euros).
“This operation will lead to the creation of a world-class multinational pay TV company, which will serve 20 million customers, with more growth prospects and immediate benefits – said Jeremy Darroch, CEO of BSkyB -. The three Sky companies are leaders in their respective national markets and will be even stronger together."
In fact, the deal is part of Murdoch's plan to give the assault on Time Warne againr, after the US film group rejected an $80 billion offer last week.
Three days ago, Bloomberg had anticipated that 21st Century Fox, the film studio giant controlled by the News Corporation, would have upped the ante and to raise the resources necessary to increase the proposal would have put Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland up for sale.
