LONDON, FEB 9 (PRINTWORDS NEWS): After the long two years battle, BSkyB will be selling 10.4% stakes of ITV with a loss of £348m. The company which held 17.9% shares now will be holding only 7.5% of the shares and says that it will remain a responsible share holder. The shares priced 48.50p each is much below the price (135p )at which the shares were purchased by the company in November 2006. The broadcasters have put in front 404m shared.
This drastic step of selling the shares is taken after the Competition Commission asked the company to reduce its shares on a rival company’s share register. The Commission justified its decision by saying that if the company holds a huge amount of shares of another company then there are chances enough that the public interest will be harmed.
The company which now holds only a part of the shares, which is only 7.5% says that it will appeal to the Supreme Court for final judgement. Also it said that this percentage of share holding is only for a short period of time. According to reports, BskyB has been suffering losses for quite a long period now and has written down the prices of shares to 20p sometime ago. The Commission’s decision has however come up at a time when the ITV share prices are at their lowest. Therefore the company might have to do with more losses in future.
However, who are buying the shares is still not known for sure as Morgan Stanley, through which the Sky shares are being sold are not disclosing any names. But this much can be guessed that the buyers are institutional investors.
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- BSkyB agrees to cut ITV stake (guardian.co.uk)
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