French media and telecoms group Vivendi announced on Wednesday that it has sold its remaining 12.34% stake in the US broadcaster NBC Universal (NBCU) to General Electric for US$3.8bn.
Vivendi has now sold its whole 20% stake in NBCU for a total amount of…
French media and telecoms group Vivendi announced on Wednesday that it has sold its remaining 12.34% stake in the US broadcaster NBC Universal (NBCU) to General Electric for US$3.8bn.
Vivendi has now sold its whole 20% stake in NBCU for a total amount of US$5.8bn, excluding dividends, which amount to US$390m between January 2010 and January 2011.
Vivendi’s CEO, Jean-Bernard Levy, expressed satisfaction that the “strategic objective” of exiting NBCU had been completed.
He said: “Vivendi now has control of all its assets and is fully focussed on pursuing its profitable growth strategy.”
NBCU has been in the news recently for its proposed JV with US cableco Comcast, which was approved by the FCC on 18 January.
Announced in 2009, this JV deal will see Comcast taking a stake of 51% and NBCU holding the remaining 49%.
Speaking at the TelecomFinance Conference 2011 about where his company might spend the proceeds, Regis Turrini, Vivendi’s senior executive vice president of Strategy & Development, said that the company was “agnostic from a geographical point of view” but very impressed with the performance of telecoms assets such as new acquisition GVT in Brazil.
He added that the company was looking for growing assets in growing countries.
