FORMER Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel’s attempt to buy management and marketing firm IMG is over before it even began.
The Post exclusively reported last month that Semel had approached IMG owner and private-equity kingpin Teddy Forstmann with a deal to acquire the company, which is home to everyone from golf great Tiger Woods to supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
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Sources close to Semel said he raised several billion dollars from a handful of sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, including Dubai Capital, and made what he considered to be a generous offer to Forstmann.
Evidently, however, Forstmann wanted a couple billion dollars more than what Semel was offering to part with his beloved agency.
“Terry told Forstmann that IMG was driven by advertising and marketing and that these are tough times for those areas and that he should be realistic,” said a source. “But Forstmann wasn’t.”
As The Post initially reported, Semel was prepared to pay $1.5 billion for IMG, but Forstmann wasn’t going to part with it for anything less than $3 billion.
While the bid-ask gap potentially could have been bridged, a $70 million lawsuit filed on Monday against reality show producer Mark Burnett by a former business partner brought the deal to a screeching halt.
IMG has been in talks to acquire Burnett’s company for a reported $250 million, and the lawsuit complicated not only that deal, but also any further moves by Semel.
But he’s not being deterred. According to the source, Semel is now contemplating a run at legendary film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
For his part, Semel had little to say about the situation when The Post caught up with him at Sun Valley yesterday.
“I’m looking at a couple of things,” Semel said before walking away.
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Apple’s iTunes might be getting another competitor, except this one already has a built-in audience.
Activision Blizzard, which just completed its $10 billion merger, is looking to leverage its new relationship with Universal Music Group to develop an online music store that piggybacks off of its wildly popular “Guitar Hero” video game.
“If you’re downloading a song to play on your ‘Guitar Hero,’ there’s no reason why you can’t download the performance also,” said company CEO Bobby Kotick.
The move would also give a boost to UMG, which is owned by partner Vivendi, at a time when the music industry is struggling.
“We are always looking for new ways to monetize our music assets,” said Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy.
The formation of Activision Blizzard creates a sizable rival to Electronic Arts, the video game industry leader that is attempting a hostile takeover offer of Take-Two Interactive, maker of “Grand Theft Auto.”
And now that the merger is complete, many assume that Activision Blizzard will at least examine Take-Two’s books if not lob in a competing offer for the company.
On that point Kotick played coy, saying only that he would “look at acquisitions that meet our requirements.”
Kotick then noted Activision Blizzard’s $20 billion market capitalization, $1 billion credit facility and $3 billion in available cash – a not-so-subtle hint that he has plenty of money available to match EA dollar-for-dollar on Take-Two.
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Yawn!
That was the collective response of the denizens of Sun Valley to CNBC’s faux scoop that Shari Redstone will not succeed her father Sumner as leader of Viacom and CBS.
“Who cares?” is how one source in attendance succinctly put it.
Anyone who follows Viacom with even a passing interest knows that current CEO Philippe Dauman is the heir apparent to Redstone’s throne.
Dauman is, after all, like the son Redstone never had – wically votes Democratic and Wall Street generally skews Republican. Both sectors are equally represented here at Sun Valley, so it might be left up to the technology guys to decide the winner of the faux election.
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Though Time Warner’s moves with AOL have been in the news almost daily, it couldn’t be further from the mind of former CEO Dick Parsons.
The Post buttonholed the gentle giant in front of Sun Valley’s tranquil duck pond yesterday and asked what he thought current Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes should be doing with the troubled Internet asset.
“I don’t know anything about AOL,” Parsons said. “I’m a man of leisure now.”
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Not unlike a grade school teacher, Allen & Co. each year provides its conference attendees with a couple of books for summer reading that typically have nothing to do with business.
Last year’s list, for instance, included George Tenet’s “At the Center of the Storm: My Years in the CIA,” “The New American Story” by former Sen. Bill Bradley and Stephen Flynn’s “Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation.
But this year, Allen & Co. is only giving out one book, and given the economic malaise and the steep decline in media company stock prices, the choice seems to indicate that the investment bank is having a little fun at its mogul attendees’ expense.
The book: Donald Keough’s “The Ten Commandments for Business Failure.”