Seagram May Be Active Holder Of Time Warner

Moreover, Seagram has eyed Time Warner before its disclosure on Wednesday that it has since February accumulated 21 million Time Warner shares in the open market for about $700 million. In July 1992, the company considered and then rejected a proposal by Seagram director Paul Desmarais that Seagram...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Wall Street journal Asia
Main Author This article was prepared by staff reporters Laura Landro, Randall Smith and Eben Shapiro
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Victoria, Hong Kong Dow Jones & Company Inc 28.05.1993
Subjects
Acquisitions & mergers
Investments
Power
R&D
Research & development
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Summary:Moreover, Seagram has eyed Time Warner before its disclosure on Wednesday that it has since February accumulated 21 million Time Warner shares in the open market for about $700 million. In July 1992, the company considered and then rejected a proposal by Seagram director Paul Desmarais that Seagram join him as part of an investor group that was negotiating to take a "strategic" stake in the Time Warner Entertainment unit. Seagram officials reviewed some Time Warner documents, but "very quickly concluded they were not interested," said a Seagram spokesman on Thursday. He said no formal presentation was made to the Seagram board, calling last year's discussions "very preliminary and very brief." Seagram disclosed in its filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission that Mr. Desmarais, chairman of Montreal media and financial services concern Power Corp., has separately acquired three million Time Warner shares -- one million of them purchased over two weeks in late April. This isn't Allen & Co.'s first deal involving a beverage giant and an entertainment company. Chairman Herbert A. Allen Jr. engineered the sale of Columbia Pictures, which he controlled, to Coca-Cola Co. in the 1980s, and then a few years later brokered Coke's sale of the studio to Sony Corp. for $3.5 billion. Mr. Allen declined to discuss its role in Seagram's Time investment and a Seagram spokesman won't say whether Allen's involvement in the situation will end once Seagram gets to its 15% level.
ISSN:0377-9920