[12-16-11] Liberty Global<\/b> has received regulatory approval to complete its acquisition of Germany\u2019s third largest cable TV operator Kabel BW (KBW)<\/b> in accordance with the terms of its previously announced purchase agreement, the company announced Dec. 15.
\n Liberty Global paid 3.16 billion euros ($4.10 billion) to acquire KBW.
\nFollowing the acquisition, Liberty Global will combine KBW with Germany\u2019s second largest operator Unitymedia, which significantly increases the reach of Liberty Global\u2019s operations in Europe\u2019s fastest growing cable market.
\n In a statement, Liberty Global President and CEO Mike Fries said the combination of Unitymedia and KBW would allow his company to rollout a powerful platform for innovation and growth. \u201cTogether, our German operations pass over 12 million homes, provide over 10 million subscription services and generate approximately 1.6 billion ($2.07 billion) in annualized revenue,\u201d said Fries. \u201cIt\u2019s well known that the cable industry in Germany is the primary source of infrastructure-based competition with the incumbent Deutsche Telekom, and we intend to capitalize on the opportunity to bring German consumers the most advanced broadband and digital TV products available.\u201d
\n KBW provides television, broadband Internet and telephony services in the German federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg, which is one of the most prosperous regions in Europe. KBW\u2019s broadband communications network served 2.4 million customers at the end of September. Liberty Global said its customers subscribed to 3.8 million video, telephony and broadband Internet services.
\n Fries had expressed an intention to expand its German markets through potential asset sales and new acquisitions as early as this past summer. In July, Fries issued a statement that Liberty Global could sell its majority stake in Australian pay television company Austar United Communications<\/b> to Foxtel<\/b> for approximately $2.67 billion.
\n \u201cIt\u2019s a natural move. We were in that market for 15 years. Now there\u2019s a growing platform in Europe, private equity is coming out and there\u2019s great access to capital. We\u2019re hopeful of [European] regulatory approval. The combined German revenue of the companies would be around 1.5 billion euros ($2.14 billion). Understandably, Deutsche Telekom<\/b> has a very strong opinion on cable consolidation in Germany,\u201d Fries said in the July statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[12-16-11] Liberty Global has received regulatory approval to complete its acquisition of Germany\u2019s third largest cable TV operator Kabel BW (KBW) in accordance with the terms of its previously announced purchase agreement, the company announced Dec. 15. Liberty Global paid 3.16 billion euros ($4.10 billion) to acquire KBW. Following the acquisition, Liberty Global will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}