Liberty Media to Increase Its News Corp. Voting Stock to 18%
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John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. will boost its ownership of News Corp. voting shares to 18%, more than originally planned, after speeding up the transaction by three months.
Liberty exercised its option to swap nonvoting stock for voting stock under an agreement struck with Merrill Lynch & Co. in November. Englewood, Colo.-based Liberty will exchange 86.9 million Class A preferred shares for 92 million Class B voting shares, company spokesman Michael Erickson said Monday.
The transaction won’t trigger a “poison pill” enacted by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. That plan, adopted Nov. 8, allowed Malone to increase his stake by as much as 1 percentage point beyond his original 17% target, News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher said.
“He had 1% wiggle room,” Butcher said. “No party can go more than 1% higher” than the levels that were grandfathered into the agreement. The poison pill sets ownership limits on both Murdoch and Malone.
Malone and Murdoch have invested together for years, including the creation of the Fox regional sports networks.
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