Acquisition
May 01 2003 - 3:03AM
UK Regulatory
RNS Number:6081K
News Corporation Ld
01 May 2003
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For Immediate Release Contact: Andrew Butcher +1 212 852 7070
Alison Clark +44 207 782 6017
News Corporation And Telecom Italia Complete Acquisition Of Telepiu
Telepiu and Stream Merged And Renamed Sky Italia
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NEW YORK (April 30, 2003) - News Corporation and Telecom Italia today completed
the acquisition of Vivendi Universal's Telepiu satellite pay TV platform in
Italy. Telepiu and Stream have merged and the combined platform has been renamed
Sky Italia, which is 80.1 percent-owned by News Corporation and 19.9
percent-owned by Telecom Italia. The merged platform has more than 2 million
subscribers throughout Italy and annual revenues of approximately Euro1 billion.
The transaction, which values Telepiu at Euro871 million, includes Euro457 million
cash (including a Euro13 million downward adjustment for accounts payable) and the
assumption of Euro414 million in debt.
As part of the acquisition, all litigation between the parties, including
Stream's litigation against Telepiu and Vivendi Universal subsidiary Canal+'s
litigation against NDS, was terminated.
The News Corporation Limited (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NCP, NCPDP) had total
assets as of December 31, 2002 of approximately US$42 billion and total annual
revenues of approximately US$16 billion. News Corporation is a diversified
international media and entertainment company with operations in seven industry
segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; magazines
and inserts; newspapers; book publishing; and other. The activities of News
Corporation are conducted principally in the United States, the United Kingdom,
Continental Europe, Australia, Asia and the Pacific Basin. For more information,
please visit www.newscorp.com
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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