Televisa-Led Group Makes Bid for Univision
An investor group led by Mexico’s Grupo Televisa SA submitted a bid for media concern Univision Communications Inc. early Friday, a person familiar with the matter said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reports. This person wouldn’t specify the price of the bid, instead describing it as “higher” than the $35.50 per-share offered by a group of rival private-equity firms. The bid came in around 2 a.m. Eastern Time. Last night a different person familiar with the matter said the bid would exceed $36 per share. The auction fell into disarray after three of Televisa’s biggest partners — private-equity houses Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. — dropped their backing at the last moment, leaving Televisa with an estimated $1.5 billion funding hole. After days of scrambling the Televisa team appeared to regroup, having received additional commitments from Bain Capital and Cascade Investments, the private-equity arm of Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The person familiar with the bid said that it was fully financed and required no additional outside capital. Univision Chief Executive Jerry Perenchio must now decide whether to accept a lower bid than the $40 per share he had originally targeted.
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Bodies in Motion Files for Bankruptcy
Bodies in Motion Inc., which operates five fitness studios from the San Fernando Valley to Orange County, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. The filing was made Tuesday at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Central District of California facility in Woodland hills. It lists the North Hills-based company’s debt between $10 million and $50 million and a like amount of assets. Bruce Gordon, the company’s founder, president and chief executive officer, did not return calls seeking comment. However, a signed declaration by Gordon suggests the company’s problems may be temporary and stem from its newest facility in Irvine, which opened in January 2005. Last summer the company hired a financial adviser to market the businesses in an attempt to find a buyer or financial partner. But none had been found prior to the filing date.
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Shyamalan Book Tells of Breakup with Disney
A new chapter has just been written in Hollywood about the never-ending tension between “the talent” and “the suits,” the Los Angeles Times reports. It can be found in a soon-to-be-published tell-all book that offers something very rare, indeed: a candid recounting, complete with tears and recriminations, of a messy divorce between a movie studio and one of the world’s most famous writer-directors. In “The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale,” the 35-year-old filmmaker whose name has become synonymous with spooky suspense thrillers crucifies the top executives at the company he long had considered his artistic home since his 1999 surprise hit “The Sixth Sense”: Walt Disney Studios.. Penned by Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger with Shyamalan’s blessing and extensive participation, the 278-page book hits stores July 20. That’s one day before the theatrical premiere of Shyamalan’s new movie, “Lady in the Water,” which is at the center of the dispute that led him to part ways with Disney.
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State Vulnerable to Oil Disruption
Just two Arab countries have supplied almost 50 percent of California’s imported oil since 2001, a dependence that leaves the state more vulnerable than the rest of the country to disruptions in the world oil markets, the Associated Press reports in The Daily Breeze. The finding, based on an analysis of state and federal crude oil import statistics, underscores the challenges confronting both California — the biggest gas-consuming state in the U.S. — and the country as a whole as lawmakers grapple with consumer outrage over high prices at the pump and a U.S. deficit that has widened on the back of high crude prices. Between 2001 and 2005, Saudi Arabia and Iraq provided an average of 49.6 percent of all the imports arriving in California, according to California Energy Commission figures. That reliance takes on a particular urgency in a market jittery over Iran’s nuclear dispute with the United States and uncertain output from war-ravaged Iraq.
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