Somebody Bought into Chorus last week.

spongebob

Sounds really weird so it does. :eek:

Liberty Media , the joint venture partner with Tony O'Reilly have sharply reduced their stake in Chorus from 50% to 39.5% , selling 21% of their stake in Chorus to a fella named Bill Bresnan according to this report on their Website.

Bresnan Communications themselves seem to be a US Northern Plains company, their business is based in the area between Chicago and the Rockies.

The Sunday Tribune hinted strongly yesterday that Bresnan may have acquired the 10.5% shareholding for a snip, quite possibly less than €100,000, or so in order to allow Liberty to massage their taxation for the year (maybe by booking a strategic loss).

The price paid for the stake also sets a marker for the price at which Tony O'Reillys Cable and MMDS operation may finally bail out and leave the Cable business to the professionals.

Anyone else hear anything?

M

ozpass

Well, as I've griped about elsewhere on boards.ie I've been experiencing a 21% reduction in picture quality for the last 2 months thanks to these imbeciles.

What would be the likelihood NTL purchasing the crippled operation?

spongebob

Bresnan could buy NTL Ireland ....Google a bit!

MDR

What would be the likelihood NTL purchasing the crippled operation?

There is noway the competition authority would allow it.

yellum

Originally posted by MDR
There is noway the competition authority would allow it.

Yeah right. They made a great ruling about Chorus and Eircom having Tony on both boards .....

spongebob

Originally posted by MDR
There is noway the competition authority would allow it.

Ya mean the Competition Authority would object to a monopoly owning all the cable into peoples houses (apart from Dungarvan in County Waterford of course). Or a platform monopoly for example ?

The way they fought hard against SKY all these years, and Eircom.

Go Away Outta That Willya

The CA are pussycats, fed on the finest(expense account) cream, waddling happily from one EU "we really must do something, lets write a report" gig to another; or else simply purring and farting contentedly in the corner while the RAT is abroad doing what RATs do.

M

ozpass

Bresnan could buy NTL Ireland ....Google a bit!

Or better still, what about the government buying out Liberty, revoking everyone else's MMDS licences and handing it all to RTE. It'd be a quick and dirty way to parallel what the Beeb have in the UK having gobbled up the skeleton left by ITV Digital's demise.

MDR

I didn't know RTE planted Money Trees

Still though if Chorus is only really worth about a million ...
I shudder to think what NTL is worth .

ozpass

I didn't know RTE planted Money Trees

1) Prune middle management
2) bomb the customer support centre and
3) Actually 'offer a service'

Achieve these simple objectives and Chorus would be a going concern. Mirror a business model (ANY business model) where the customer is treated with a modicum of respect and it might even make a profit.

SkepticOne

A merger of NTL and Chorus would do away with the possibility of competition between these two companies, but right now there is no competition and both companies are still operating within their old franchise areas (despite these being abolished) and this situation is likely to continue for the forseable future).

As to Chorus being bought up by some outside investor, this does not fill me with hope. Because the pipe tv business is very uncompetitive in Ireland, the purpose of any buyout is likely to be in order to turn it into a cash cow shipping money out of the country.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
The way they fought hard against SKY all these years, and Eircom.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I would actually like Sky to compete head to head in Ireland with Chorus and NTL (who don't compete with each other). They have the capability of doing so and carry all the UK terrestrial channels currently offered by Chorus and NTL, but don't make them all available here. I regard cable, MMDS and satelite TV to be potentially one market. It is just that there is little competition between them with Sky opting to provide a complimentary rather than competitive service.

Stark

I've noticed the chorus vans are back around the place after some abscence. I guess irish roads can't be staying intact for too long.

crawler

Skepticone - I agree with you, kinda

SKY will never be able to do decent broadband - ntl ( small letters please! ) and Chorus will never beat murdoch at his own "tabloid over telly" game

ntl and chorus could focus on Broadband and Content delivery and voice with SKY focusing on DTV and interactivity.

I think a really compelling service could be derived from this....problem is that some people will not allow a dish and some appartment blocks and new development have banned dishes.

If all 3 offered such a combied service they could also offer a wholesale offering to OLO's - or at least Comreg could force them to.

Just pie in the sky stuff really though

As for either Chorus or ntl being bought out fully......guys , you know better.

crawler

Muck - why do you think Bresnan would want to buy ntl - I dont think the new bond holders would like to lose their new investment...any links?

ntl was bought for £525m and then spent another £90m replacing lots of network......Wouldnt be worth near that now....