* Companies examine options to overcome regulatory opposition
* Deal blocked in October over broadcast ownership concentration
* Astral shares rise 4.6 pct, BCE up 1.5 pct in Toronto (Adds details on regulators, share price move)
Nov 16 (Reuters) - Canada's Astral Media Inc and its suitor BCE Inc, are in talks to examine ways to overcome regulatory opposition to their proposed combination, Astral said on Friday.
Canada's broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), blocked the proposed C$3 billion ($3 billion) takeover of Astral last month, saying the deal would give too much power to BCE. The company, parent of Bell Canada, is already the country's biggest telecoms company and owner of numerous TV and radio assets.
Astral's Toronto-listed shares were halted early on Friday, after a newspaper report that the two companies were poised to announce a revised deal that would involve the auctioning of a number of Astral's English broadcast assets to make the deal more palatable for regulators.
"There will be an Act Two here that will be workable," the Globe and Mail newspaper quoted a person familiar with the discussions as saying.
Astral said in a statement its talks with BCE involve, among other things, filing a new application to the regulator.
"The timing and details of any such application have not yet been determined. The company will keep its investors informed of any significant developments in this respect," Astral said.
The regulator had said it did not want BCE to amend its application on the fly during hearings on its first application, but it did not rule out a completely new application.
"As an administrative tribunal, we are bound to entertain any application," CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel said on Friday.
BCE is seeking to buy Astral, its largest content provider, mainly to strengthen its position in the Francophone province of Quebec, where rival Quebecor Inc has a much bigger presence.
Quebecor, Rogers Communications and other rivals of BCE had said the original deal would have let it lock up more programming for its vast media platform and would have given it too much heft and pricing power.
The takeover needs to win approval from both the CRTC and Canada's antitrust watchdog the Competition Bureau, which has yet to disclose its views on the deal.
Last month, BCE extended the closing date on the proposed deal to Dec. 16. The two companies have the right to further postpone the outside date by an additional 30 days to Jan 15, 2013.
"There is no assurance that any transaction will occur or occur with the terms and conditions currently contemplated," said Astral.
Astral shares were up 4.6 percent at C$44.22 at 1330 ET, after trading in the stock resumed in Toronto. BCE shares rose 1.5 percent to C$42.01.
($1 = 1.0028 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Euan Rocha in Toronto and Randall Palmer in Ottawa; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Grant McCool)
Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/hotStocksNews/~3/O__c0tpZtgo/astral-bce-idUSL1E8MG80R20121116
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