Media In The City: Microsoft Makes Move On Yahoo!
Last week was jam-packed with city news, as Microsoft announced that it was making a bid for Yahoo! and the government decided that Sky must reduce its stake in ITV.
On Friday it was revealed that Microsoft had launched a $44.6 billion takeover bid to buy Yahoo!, saying that it is confident of delivering up to $1 billion in cost savings under the terms of the proposed deal (Full Story).
The news came just days after Yahoo! published a trading statement showing that its profits fell 23% to $206 million in the fourth quarter, while it also confirmed plans to make 1,000 job cuts (Full Story).
At the start of the week was the news that most people were expecting, when business secretary John Hutton announced that he would be following the Competition Commission’s recommendation that Sky reduce its 17.9% stake in ITV to under 7.5%.
ITV said that it warmly welcomed the decision and found that it was in the best interests of the majority of its shareholders (Full Story).
Media planning and buying company Aegis was reported to be in talks about buying a stake in digital media company i-Level (Full Story).
Last year, i-Level appointed corporate finance advisers at Ingenious Media to advise on a strategic review, which could lead to a sale for around £70 million.
Google reported 13% growth in fourth quarter profits, to $1.2 billion, with the number of paid clicks on advertisements up by 30% year on year (Full Story).
GCap Media announced that it expects like for like revenue growth to be up 7% in January, with radio advertising also up 7% (Full Story).
GCap said that this “represents an encouraging start to the quarter as the comparable period to 31 March 2007 was the year’s strongest in terms of revenue growth”.
On Thursday, the Takeover Panel gave Global Radio five weeks to decide whether to make a second bid for GCap Media (Full Story).
The panel said that it made the decision following representations made by the advisers for GCap and discussions with both companies.
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