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Liberty Completes Spin

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. — Liberty Media completed the
planned spin of two tracking stocks last week,
transforming a third — Liberty Interactive — into
an asset-backed security in a series of complicated
transactions.

Last Monday, shares of tracking stocks Liberty
Capital, which owns minority interests in several
publicly traded media companies, and Liberty Starz,
which controls premium channel Starz, were spun
off from the company, resulting in a third tracker —
Liberty Interactive — becoming asset-backed. Liberty
Starz and Liberty Capital, remain tracking stocks.

Liberty first proposed the transactions, made to
simplify Liberty’s structure, in June 2010.

As a result of the spins Liberty Capital and Liberty
Starz traded under temporary NASDAQ symbols
(LCPAD and LSTAD) from Sept. 26 to Sept.
30. They were scheduled to return to trading under
their old NASDAQ symbols (LCAPA and LSTZA) on
Oct. 3. Liberty Interactive shares were not affected.

Dish Leads Hulu Bidding

NEW YORK — Satelliite-TV giant Dish Network leads
the bidders for online video provider Hulu, according
to several reports.

Hulu, a partnership between
NBCUniversal, News Corp. and
The Walt Disney Co., went on
the block in the summer. Business Insider said
online search behemoth Google had the highest
bid — at $4 billion — but tacked on conditions
including extending content rights that the owners
were not willing to concede. Dish’s bid came in at
around $1.9 billion, close to the reported $2 billion
value of the online content provider.

Hulu will mull over the bids and decide its next
steps, Business Insider said.

A Hulu buy could mesh well with Dish’s $320
million purchase of video-rental giant Blockbuster
earlier this year. In September, Dish announced
Blockbuster Movie Pass, which would give subscribers
to its satellite TV service access to about
10,000 DVDs, 3,00 movies on TV and 4,000 movies
streamed to PCs for $10 per month.

Time Warner Inc. Mulls Center Move


NEW YORK — Time Warner Inc. is considering moving
out of the iconic Time Warner Center here and
may relocate to a new World Trade Center in Lower
Manhattan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The 2.8 million-square-foot Time Warner Center
was built in 2004 and includes Time Warner Inc.,
headquarters, headquarters for Time Warner Cable,
restaurants, retail shops, condominiums and other
office space. Time Warner Inc., which includes Time
Inc., Turner Networks, Home Box Office and Warner
Bros. studios, is evaluating its office footprint in the
city to be more cost efficient and is considering several
options, the Journal reported.

Time Warner declined to comment.

Among those considerations are Silverstein
Properties’ World Trade Center towers in Lower
Manhattan and Hudson Yards on the West Side.
Time Warner has about 6,000 employees in New
York and leases about 4 million square feet of office space scattered around the city. One scenario
being considered is consolidating all of its New
York operations in one building, although the company
could ultimately decide to do nothing. A formal
plan is scheduled for late next year, the Journal
said. Either way it has time to decide — most
of the leases don’t lapse until 2017 and 2018,
with the rest expiring later.