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Technology Stocks : Primestar/TCI Satellite (TSATA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zebraspot who wrote (114)	10/15/1998 4:20:00 AM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 442

October 14, 1998: PrimeStar Deal Looks Dead Washington -- PrimeStar Inc. has called off its $1.1 billion deal to buy American Sky Broadcasting's high-power direct broadcast satellite assets, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday. A PrimeStar spokesman could not be reached, but a News Corp. spokesman confirmed the deal was off and said, "We're pursuing other options for the sale of these assets." News controls ASkyB. A Justice Department spokesman said the statement quoted Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general that heads the antitrust unit, as saying the abandonment was "the right result and a big win for consumers." Klein's unit sued to block the deal because PrimeStar is mostly owned by big cable operators, including Time Warner Inc., Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and MediaOne Group Inc. Sources close to the deal had indicated Wednesday that attempts by News and United Video Satellite Group Inc. to buy out the MSOs were on the rocks. News Corp. and UVSG tried to rework an earlier $6-per-share cash offer to buy out the MSOs' 60 percent equity in PrimeStar after TCI Satellite Entertainment Inc.'s (TSAT) share price tumbled. TSAT owns 37 percent of PrimeStar. But the MSOs -- especially Time Warner, which controls 30 percent of PrimeStar's equity -- wouldn't accept a lower price or a partial equity sale, the sources said. News Corp. and UVSG tried to persuade the operators to retain some nonvoting equity in PrimeStar, but Time Warner refused, one source said. Another source indicated that News Corp. and UVSG (which is mostly owned by TCI units) could come back with another proposal, so the deal might not be dead. PrimeStar and Time Warner executives wouldn't comment. Any arrangement leaving the MSOs with stakes in PrimeStar might have been hard to sell to Justice anyway. - 10/14/98 multichannel.com