United News & Media is believed to be about to pre-empt Carlton Communications and make a £300m takeover bid for HTV.
United is worried by the possibility of a Carlton takeover of HTV because its TV sales house, TSMS, currently handles HTV’s airtime sales. If Carlton owned HTV then this source of revenue for United would cease as Carlton would handle sales itself.
Whilst the change in media ownership rules, which becomes effective in November, has created much speculation that a range of takeovers among the ITV companies will happen, many analysts believe that such talk has inflated share prices to the extent that some companies are not realistically worth what they would cost to buy. At 0930 this morning HTV rose 3.5p to 355p while Carlton increased 1p to 484p. United remained static at 689p.
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