TCI Chair John Malone said that he is worried about
Wall Street's reaction to his company's merger with AT&T in
the cover story of BROADCASTING & CABLE. Malone, asked
about the drop in AT&T's stock price since the deal was
announced: "It scares me to death to see their [AT&T] stock
going down. Scares me to death because I think it could
well kill the deal. Their shareholders have to vote for it,
right?" Regarding the future of Liberty Media, Malone was
asked whether he will take News Corp. out of his Fox/Liberty
sports operations, or perhaps buy Rainbow Holdings from
Cablevision Chair Charles Dolan: "No. I'm an investor, I'm
not an operator. ... I can be a partner with Rupert
[Murdoch] and let him do all the heavy lifting, and I can
just participate in the economics." More Malone: "Liberty
Media is a financial company; it's going to be a bigger
financial company" (BROADCASTING & CABLE, 7/13 issue). In
DC, Paul Farhi writes that AT&T stock, which was selling for
as much as $65.37 1/2 per share the day before the merger
with TCI was announced, closed yesterday at $56.75. TCI's
Class A shares have "generally held steady" since the
announcement of the deal (WASHINGTON POST, 7/14).
ANOTHER MOVE: Yesterday, Liberty Media offered to buy
"the public's 17% stake" in TCI Int'l for stock worth $408M,
according to Martin Peers of DAILY VARIETY. Peers calls it
the "latest move" by Malone "to tidy up the unwieldy TCI
corporate structure" (DAILY VARIETY, 7/14).
