BSkyB slurps Murdoch's Italian and German Sky assets to beef up European pay-TV biz

BSkyB is pursing a bold pay-TV strategy in Europe with the unsurprising buyout today of 21st Century Fox's 100 per cent stake in Sky Italia and 57.4 per cent interest in Sky Deutschland. It told the City this morning that it would pay £2.45bn to acquire Sky Italia from media mogul Rupert Murdoch's company, which has a 39 per …

[Anonymous Coward]

My shares go down in value

"But the London Stock Exchange reacted with indifference to the takeover plans, pushing BSkyB shares down 2.65 per cent to 900.45p on Friday morning."

Funny this. because reading the news on the Sky intranet site it's the best thing that's ever happened!

My manager even got of his arse and sent an email telling me how wonderful this is.

A rare thing for a manager at Sky to actually communicate with their staff but I'll take the positive that he knows his team actually exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My shares go down in value

I noticed you posted as AC, but accepting what they say as truth, of course they will say that, they're Sky. /facepalm

[Andy Roid McUser]

Moving money and assets around

So 21st Century Fox, a company controlled by Murdoch, sells some of its assets to another company where Murdoch has the controlling interest ( BSkyB ).

This isn't news, just an internal accounting exercise.

[Stuart 22]

Re: Moving money and assets around

A little more than that. A cynic might say he trousering a few billion of value from other shareholders for a company he still effectively controls. More fool them methinks. Do they get to vote?

And of course he has ways of extracting money from the bigger Sky into his own companies to grab back some of the profit that might have leaked to the other shareholders.

The $64 billion question is where is Uncle Rupert on his succession planning and dynasty creation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Moving money and assets around

The $64 billion question is where is Uncle Rupert on his succession planning and dynasty creation?

In hell hopefully

[amarkr2000]

This is just to build FOX's war chest to having another go at buying up Time Warner

[Old Lady]

So is this why my Sky subscription has gone up AGAIN?

[Warm Braw]

So is this why my Sky subscription has gone up AGAIN?

No, the reason your Sky subscription has gone up is because you're prepared to pay the increased cost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be rather entertaining to see Tanja Bauer (Sky.de F1) paired up with Martin Brundle on SSF1 since they will be colleagues now. Even better, replace Simon Lazenby with her.

[Christian Berger]

What would be cool

Is that they would just close down Sky Deutschland and replace it with Sky UK. Considering how bad Sky Deutschland is in everything except sports (which I don't really care for), that would be a real improvement.

[Michael Habel]

Re: What would be cool

As someone who had near full access to BSkyB for a time... Sans the Sports Channels. I can tell you now I still spent a good 90% on the plan 'old FreeSat Channels... (i.e. BBC, iTV, Channels 4 & 5). And, sadly (for them....), I can find pretty much anything, and everything with-in a few clicks inside XBMC. (e.g. TV Shows, and even the latest Film releases... Plus a small handful of US Stations from Pennsylvania... All free!). Sadly with the latest additions to the Fleet (Astra's 2 E & F @ 28°E), I'm no longer able to even enjoy these Channels as I had since they had started broadcasting in the clear ca~ 2005. This makes me a sad panda.... The Meds that are being constantly flogged over there in the States might have helped if I had access to them... Really I never really appreciated what "Commercial free TV" meant till I stated watching such streaming services such as "US TV Now" Which is basically an XBMC add-on.

Best part of being able to catch up on all these TV Shows is that all the Adds have already been nixed. In fact I dare say that this "Service" is soooo good that I've already canceled my Cable Provider, and have (or will have replaced my HTPC, with a small-ish Apple-TV styled), Android Box with which to continue enjoying this.

This site has seemingly purported from time to time that TV will one day be tied to the Net... I don't think that'll quite ever happpen in the States.... But, as for Europe.... I'm a firm believer now...

[Christian Berger]

Re: What would be cool

Well I kinda have the same problem. In fact with the new satellite I'm even exactly in a null, so there is no hope of reception. I get by with a video disk service which gets me DRM-free files delivered via FTP.

Anyhow of course German TV averages about "Five".

[StimuliC]

Murdoch plays the asset movement game...

I'm a little confused by this news story or is it just Rupert Murdoch moving assets around to make tax right offs!

Murdoch owns 20th Century Fox etc that purchased all these Sky services off......Murdoch.

He seems to be the buyer and the seller in this case. Another act by the master crook!

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadcast TV is dead, it's just the punters that need to realise. Most of Sky's consumer base is white, male and retired and watches a lot of cricket or a bit of football (because that's how the games work).

Satellite TV has ruined terrestrial TV and now we're ready for IPTV, personal subscriptions to programming, either PPV or Freemium cost modelling, contract or no contract. And we expect ads, lots of them. This is the TV you wanted, thanks very much and goodnight.

[gazthejourno]

"Massively popular consumer thing is DEAD!" - once, er, it's no longer massively popular with consumers.

I won't be holding my breath.