Hearst’s dude-centric UGO site, which has been without a permanent CEO since June, is still looking for a new boss. But in the meantime, it has some new blood: The company has brought in Hearst veteran Christopher Johnson to run programming and product strategy and hired Julie Shumaker to run 1UP, the gaming site it bought earlier this year.
Ideal Bite, the green-flavored lifestyle newsletter business Disney bought in June 2008, faces an uncertain fate: Its parent company is shuttling the unit from one corporate silo to another and says it’s not sure what will become of it once that happens. Translation: The job market is going to see a few more resumes.
Steve Ballmer says he doesn’t expect to do much search-related M&A, which makes sense since there’s little left to buy. But he may be willing to pay for search. Ask AOL.
Here’s the big media deal everyone has been waiting for. Or at least, here’s the report: Sharon Waxman of TheWrap reports that cable giant Comcast is buying all of NBC Universal from GE for $35 billion. Comcast says the report is “inaccurate.”
More from the post-Q&A Q&A: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says major investors like Gordon Crawford support her, and that she’s in the market for medium-sized M&A. Here’s what she had to say.
Even when the M&A market was shut down, Wall Street couldn’t stop speculating about GE’s intentions for its NBC Universal unit. And now that it’s deal-making time again, the chatter is getting very noisy.
Hence the flurry of coverage over yesterday’s remarks by Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, in which he said…not very much.
Get used to headlines like this: Disney is buying up comic powerhouse Marvel for $4 billion. The cash and stock deal values Marvel at $50 a share, up almost 30 percent from its Friday close.
We’ll get more details during a conference call later this morning, but if you want to kill time until then, you can play amateur M&A guy and draw up your own list of big media companies that will be buying or selling in the next year or so.
Did a federal court just give underemployed M&A guys a boost? Could be: The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has overturned a longstanding cap on cable-system ownership.
If the decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.
Facebook offered to buy TipJoy, then changed its mind. Now the micropayment start-up has closed, and a co-founder is working for…Facebook.
Did you want to buy or sell a media or tech company in the last six months? Chances are you didn’t: New data from banker The Jordan, Edmiston Group say the M&A market for the first half of 2009 was nearly nonexistent, at least compared to the post-MySpace Web 2.0 heyday. One exception to the drought: A booming market for mobile companies.
The founders of Last.fm, the London-based Web music start-up CBS snapped up for $280 million two years ago, are leaving the company. No word yet on whom CBS will appoint to replace the founding trio of Felix Miller, Richard Jones and Martin Stiksel, or what any of the men intend to do next.
Miller announced the deal in a short blog post today. More shortly….
Looking for lots of specifics about the $200 million at $10 billion valuation deal that Facebook and Digital Sky Technologies just announced? Then you have come to the wrong conference call, my friend. But for what it’s worth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did sound fairly upbeat and confident during his chat with reporters Tuesday morning–the way you’d expect someone who just cashed a check for a couple hundred million to sound.
The big picture: Even though Facebook’s official valuation has slid from $15 billion (November 2007, when Microsoft invested) to $10 billion, Zuckerberg is OK with that, arguing that 1) that deal was done at the peak of the market, and 2) it was never really a financial deal, but a way for Microsoft to partner up with Facebook.
More fuel for the “things may not be getting worse, and may even be getting a little bit better” meme that I’ve been detecting (or perhaps promulgating ) recently: Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney notes that the Internet stocks he covers are up an average of 28 percent so far this year while the tech-heavy NASDAQ is only up seven percent and the broader S&P is down two percent. If this keeps up, we might have an M&A market again. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
