2nd June 08: More of this activity to come: The publisher of the Times of India has bought Virgin Radio from SMG for £53.2m
Have been watching the M&A and buy-out activity of Chinese and Indian firms who are increasingly focusing their attention on the West. And believe this type of activity will definitely be on the increase as China and India continue to grow in economic strength.
This was the focus, in part of the India Investor Summit I attended a few weeks ago as a guest of my good friend Richard Feigen at Seymour Pierce, http://www.seymourpierce.com who was one of the sponsors of the conference. Richard is utterly delightful and has been a very good friend since we met a few years ago and a pretty great business man too.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that the publisher of the Times of India has bought Virgin Radio from SMG for £53.2m ($105.3m), in its first international acquisition and its first step towards an ambitious vision of creating a new music entertainment brand for the UK.
SMG, the Scottish broadcaster, sold the national AM licence and FM London licence to TIML Golden Square, a subsidiary of Bennett Coleman, the Indian publisher, and Absolute Radio, a radio investor and consultancy backed by Irish property money.
This is possibly the third or perhaps, fourth acquisition of this type that I have read in the Financial Times over the last three weeks and a pattern tends to lead to a trend.
More undoubtedly to follow.
Have a great Mon and here's to Jesse McCartney: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ44T47Hw6g&feature=related
- Posted by SRana on 01/06/2008.
- SRana's site
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