Clear Channel (CCU) Sues Providence Over Buy-Out
Almost every week now a private equity or hedge fund walks away from a transaction to take a public company private. In most cases the public company boards try to keep deals on track by lowering their asking price or…
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Almost every week now a private equity or hedge fund walks away from a transaction to take a public company private. In most cases the public company boards try to keep deals on track by lowering their asking price or they take a break-up fee and allow the buyer to walk away.
There will be none of the kid gloves stuff at Clear Channel (NYSE: CCU). It has a deal with Providence Equity to buy its TV stations for $1.2 billion. The transaction was announced ten months ago and has not closed, which is hardly a good sign.
According to The Wall Street Journal "Clear Channel is suing Providence for "specific performance," a legal term which typically addresses the ability of the seller to force the buyer to complete a deal agreement."
As far as market observers can tell many banks and buy-out firms are being advised by their attorneys to turn their backs on transactions instead of getting burned by deals which have begun to look to rich between signing a buy-out agreement and actually closing. Clear Channel is making it clear that walking may have a very high price.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
