Liberty Closes OpenTV Deal
Karen Brown
Multichannel News
8/28/2002 2:57:00 PM
Liberty Media Corp. has closed a with MIH Ltd. worth about $177 million to gain a controlling stake in OpenTV Corp.
Pooled with its existing interests, Liberty now controls between 37 percent and 40 percent of the economic interest and about 85 percent of the voting interest in the Mountain View, Calif.-based interactive-TV-technology provider.
Liberty paid $46.2 million cash and bought 15.2 million shares to acquire the stake.
Liberty's subsidiary, Liberty Broadband Interactive Television Inc., will own and manage its stake in OpenTV. LBIT president and CEO Peter Boylan III has been named chairman of OpenTV's board of directors, while OpenTV CEO James Ackerman will retain his post.
'Liberty Media's investment should enable us to take interactive television to another level while creating significant long-term value for our shareholders,' Ackerman said in a release.
OpenTV's interactive-TV software is deployed in more than 50 countries and 50 cable and satellite networks, reaching more than 27 million households worldwide.
In the United States, its largest customer is EchoStar Communications Corp., which has deployed more than 4 million OpenTV-ready digital-satellite receivers.
Although OpenTV has provided a middleware platform up to now, Boylan indicated when the deal was announced in May that the company will shift its focus toward applications for interactive TV.
