Turkish media giant Dogan Group has upped its offer for a majority stake in the country’s largest DTH provider Digiturk.
In a stock exchange announcement, Dogan stated that its subsidiary Dogan TV Holding has made a non-binding offer of US$879.45m for…
Turkish media giant Dogan Group has upped its offer for a majority stake in the country’s largest DTH provider Digiturk.
In a stock exchange announcement, Dogan stated that its subsidiary Dogan TV Holding has made a non-binding offer of US$879.45m for the 53% holding that is being sold by the Turkish state’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF).
The revised bid is an 18.5% increase on Dogan’s initial offer of US$742m that it made back in September 2013. Since then there has been significant speculation that fast-growing Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera has been weighing up a bid of its own and has hired Barclays Capital to advise it on the process.
The process first began in May 2013 after TMSF seized control of Turkish diversified holding company Çukurova’s stake in Digiturk due to the latter missing certain commercial repayments.
In July, Turkey’s incumbent telco Turk Telecom made a non-binding cash offer of US$530m for the stake in order to, according to a spokesman, “open the doors to negotiations”. However, the head of TMSF, Şakir Ercan Gül, reportedly said at the time that this offer was too low.
The remaining 47% of the satellite broadcaster is owned by private equity company Providence Equity Partners. The sponsor has itself been linked with both making a bid for remainder of Digiturk and selling its minority stake but has so far not commented on the situation.
While Dogan’s latest offer puts it in pole position, it faces a sizeable regulatory hurdle as it owns Turkey’s other major DTH firm D-Smart.
