Virgin’s owner rules out ITV bid

THE US telecoms goliath behind Virgin Media has ruled out a takeover of ITV – but says it wants to work more closely with the broadcaster, writesPeter Campbell.

Liberty Global has splurged just over £25bn on major takeovers in the last five years. But its finance boss Charlie Bracken yesterday said the buying ITV outright – a potential deal that had been muted by many City watchers – would be ‘awfully pricey’.

Instead Liberty – which took a 6.45pc stake in ITV last year – would prefer to reach a deal to distribute its shows across Europe instead. ITV, Britain’s biggest programme producer which yesterday won rights to animated comedy Family Guy, already sells its shows all over the world through its ITV Global Entertainments division.

Shares climbed 0.9p to 257.7p, though ITV refused to respond to the Liberty comments. Bracken also said that he expected BT (flat at 465.4p) to be bought in the next ‘two decades’ and Europe, including the UK, to be dominated by three large players – Liberty, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom.

Deal-making across the sector will come to a head this week when details of the £10bn megadeal to take over O2 are unveiled.

Asia’s richest man Li Ka-Shing is set to team up with a sovereign wealth fund to orchestrate the deal that will merge Three with O2. A second mega-deal within the UK telecoms space – BT’s £12.5bn acquisition of EE – has aroused competition fears.

Telecoms infrastructure group CityFibre has become the latest to object to the deal.