Charter Communications and Comcast have named Matthew Siegel as CFO of their new cable joint venture currently known as ‘SpinCo’.
The new cableco will be spun-off from Comcast following the completion of its US$40bn-plus merger with Time Warner…
Charter Communications and Comcast have named Matthew Siegel as CFO of their new cable joint venture currently known as ‘SpinCo’.
The new cableco will be spun-off from Comcast following the completion of its US$40bn-plus merger with Time Warner Cable (TWC) and its divestiture of subscribers to Charter, providing regulators approve the transactions.
Siegel will join from TWC where he is senior vice-president and treasurer. He will remain in that role until the company merges with Comcast.
As treasurer he currently oversees investment management, real estate, risk management and the company’s supply chain management.
Siegel joins Michael Willner on the management team, who was appointed CEO last month. Willner was the co-founder and CEO of Insight Communications, a regional cableco which was bought up by TWC in 2011 for US$3bn.
Siegel worked with Willner at Insight, serving as SVP of Finance and Treasurer for a year between 2000 and 2001. After that Siegel headed to Time Warner, and then went with TWC when it was spun-off from the media group in early 2009.
In a statement Willner said he had known Siegel for many years and that “his expertise in finance and knowledge of the cable industry make him a natural choice to serve as SpinCo CFO”.
SpinCo is being created as a way for Comcast and TWC to efficiently dispose of subscribers. In total the merged Comcast/TWC will shed 3.9 million video customers leaving it with less than 30 million subscribers and less than 30% of the multichannel video programming distributor market – a share regulators have been comfortable with in the past.
Under the plan Charter will acquire 1.4 million TWC customers for an undisclosed cash sum once the merger with Comcast has closed, taking Charter’s subscriber base to 5.7 million and making it America’s second-largest cableco.
Comcast plans to divest a further 2.5 million subscribers by transferring them to SpinCo, which will be publicly-traded company. It will be 67%-owned by Comcast and TWC shareholders. The remaining 33% will be held by New Charter – a new holding company that will own 100% of Charter and hold its stake in SpinCo. New Charter will acquire its 33% by issuing new shares to Comcast and TWC shareholders.
Charter will have a services agreement with SpinCo, which will help both companies achieve greater scale and regional efficiencies.
SpinCo will operate cable systems in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
