Lions Gate to Explore Starz
05 February 2016 - 12:00AM
Dow Jones News
Lions Gate Entertainment Co. said Thursday that it has rekindled
merger talks with Starz, a year after cable mogul John Malone set
the table for a tie up.
In a regulatory filing, Lions Gate—Hollywood's largest
independent studio and maker of shows including AMC's "Mad Men" and
the "Hunger Games" film franchise—said it "intends to explore
whether there is a potential mutually beneficial combination of the
two companies."
Last November, Mr. Malone exchanged a portion of his Starz stake
for a 3.43% position in Lions Gate and a seat on the studio's
board. Through the swap, Lions Gate got a 4.51% stake in Englewood,
Colo.-based Starz. Mr. Malone is Starz's largest voting
shareholder.
Starz, home of the Starz and Encore networks, was spun off from
Mr. Malone's Liberty Media Corp. in 2012, one move in a string of
restructurings that has transformed the cable conglomerate into
several smaller but separate companies. Last May, Mr. Malone helped
orchestrate a $55 billion merger between Charter Communications
Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc. Liberty helped fund the deal by
buying $5 billion of new Charter shares.
A month later, Mr. Malone told The Wall Street Journal that
Lions Gate could buy Starz "and potentially other free radicals in
the industry." That was after Lions Gate had earlier expressed
interest in pursuing a deal with Starz, but the two sides couldn't
come to terms over valuation and tax issues.
Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 04, 2016 07:45 ET (12:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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