Suzanne Shep­pard

Lib­er­ty Glob­al, which is in talks with Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) about a pos­si­ble US$5.7 bil­lion takeover, had been buy­ing up tele­vi­sion, ca­ble and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies across Eu­rope over the past few years be­fore turn­ing its at­ten­tion to the rapid­ly grow­ing mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

If its ac­qui­si­tion of CWC takes place, the com­pa­ny will sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease its pres­ence in this re­gion where its mar­kets are cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed to Puer­to Ri­co and Chile.

An­a­lysts say Lib­er­ty, which is head­ed by 74-year-old Amer­i­can ty­coon John Mal­one, is al­ready a huge in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tor pro­vid­ing tele­vi­sion, broad­band in­ter­net and tele­pho­ny ser­vices to 27 mil­lion cus­tomers across 14 coun­tries, most­ly in Eu­rope. The main ob­jec­tive, they say, is to com­bine CWC with its ex­ist­ing as­sets in the re­gion and pose a stronger chal­lenge to Span­ish-owned Tele­fon­i­ca, as well as the tele­coms in­ter­ests held by Mex­i­can bil­lion­aire, Car­los Slim.

Late last week, of­fi­cials of both com­pa­nies end­ed months of spec­u­la­tion when they con­firmed that takeover dis­cus­sions were in progress. Lib­er­ty has un­til No­vem­ber 19 to make an of­fer or an­nounce that it has no in­ten­tion to buy CWC.

Lib­er­ty's buy­ing spree has so far in­clud­ed ac­qui­si­tion of Irish broad­cast­er TV3 and Bel­gian mo­bile-phone op­er­a­tor BASE Com­pa­ny, as well as the pur­chase of shares in British broad­cast­er ITV and in pro­duc­tion house All3Mei­da in just the past year. Pre­vi­ous ac­qui­si­tions, the UK's Vir­gin Me­dia and Dutch ca­ble op­er­a­tor Zig­go, have al­ready put the com­pa­ny well on the way to be­com­ing a glob­al me­dia and con­tent-dis­tri­b­u­tion gi­ant.

Ear­li­er this year, CWC ac­quired Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al in a US$1.85 bil­lion deal which brought sig­nif­i­cant ad­di­tions to its busi­ness as­sets across the re­gion in the form of fi­bre op­tic sub­ma­rine back­haul and ter­res­tri­al broad­band and tele­vi­sion. In re­cent months the com­pa­ny moved to fo­cus on­ly on its Caribbean op­er­a­tions by sell­ing its as­sets in Macau and Mona­co and re­lo­cat­ing its man­age­ment head­quar­ters from Lon­don to Mi­a­mi.

Re­ports are that the con­sol­i­da­tion of the two com­pa­nies has been un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion for sev­er­al months. How­ev­er, CWC has been telling its in­vestors there is no "cer­tain­ty that any firm of­fer will be made, nor the terms on which any such of­fer might be made."

CWC chief ex­ec­u­tive Phil Bent­ley hint­ed at a takeover ap­proach ear­li­er in the year when he said: "We've got in­to a po­si­tion of strength to be the re­gion­al pow­er­house, which is good but we'll nev­er be a glob­al play­er. We're a big fish in our lit­tle Caribbean Sea.

"We've got to just play our game in the re­gion and if one of the glob­al play­ers comes knock­ing on our door, then so be it. If some­one then puts enough mon­ey on the ta­ble then so be it. No­body is im­mune from takeover in­ter­est."

Lib­er­ty Glob­al's con­sumer brands are Vir­gin Me­dia, Zig­go, Uni­ty­media, Te­lenet, UPC, VTR and Lib­er­ty. Its op­er­a­tions al­so in­clude Lib­er­ty Glob­al Busi­ness Ser­vices and Lib­er­ty Glob­al Ven­tures.

Mal­one, a bil­lion­aire busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive, landown­er and phil­an­thropist, is chair­man of Lib­er­ty Me­dia, Lib­er­ty Glob­al, and Lib­er­ty In­ter­ac­tive.