The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
By Jennifer Saba
NEW YORK, Nov 22 (Reuters Breakingviews) - DirecTV ended plans to buy its satellite rival as owner Charlie Ergen refuses to haggle with bondholders balking over a $1.5 bln discount. He’ll be stuck with $10 bln of debt, creditors get left on shaky ground and synergies worth $8 bln vanish in an epic lose-lose-lose.
Full view will be published shortly.
Follow @jennifersaba on X
CONTEXT NEWS
Satellite operator DirecTV said on Nov. 21 it is terminating its deal with EchoStar-owned Dish because Dish bondholders rejected the terms of a debt exchange that required them to accept a $1.5 billion discount.
Under terms of the transaction announced on Sept. 30, DirecTV agreed to buy its pay-TV rival for a nominal $1 and assume $9.75 billion of debt. DirectTV said it expected to generate at least $1 billion of annual cost savings from the combination by the third anniversary of the deal closing, originally expected to be in late 2025.
PJT Partners is DirecTV’s lead adviser and Barclays is advising private equity firm TPG, which is buying 70% of DirecTV from AT&T. JPMorgan is advising EchoStar. Bank of America, Evercore, LionTree and Morgan Stanley also provided advice to DirecTV and TPG.
(Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Pranav Kiran)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on SABA/jennifer.saba@thomsonreuters.com))
免责声明：投资有风险，本文并非投资建议，以上内容不应被视为任何金融产品的购买或出售要约、建议或邀请，作者或其他用户的任何相关讨论、评论或帖子也不应被视为此类内容。本文仅供一般参考，不考虑您的个人投资目标、财务状况或需求。TTM对信息的准确性和完整性不承担任何责任或保证，投资者应自行研究并在投资前寻求专业建议。