Word: diller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...gyrating stock prices! Not since the 1980s has Wall Street so unabashedly savored a fight as it did the one that broke out last week for filmmaker Paramount Communications. With a bid from Viacom Inc. valued at $7.5 billion already on the table, QVC shopping-network chairman Barry Diller unveiled a staggering $9.5 billion counteroffer. Paramount stockholders could almost be heard sighing at the thought of their potential profits. In a counterassault with personal overtones, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone fired back with an antitrust suit accusing one of Diller's chief backers, John Malone, the head of cable-TV powerhouse...
...advent of such an '80s-style fight had Wall Streeters in a spasm of nostalgia for a decade in which it seemed that deals had to be mean if they were going to be big. Propelled by Diller's bid and constant rumors of new suitors, Paramount stock rose 7 3/8 a share, to close at 75 7/8 last week. Arbitragers, who purchase the stock of takeover targets in the hope that deals will be completed, welcomed the battle and became voracious buyers. Fee- hunting investment bankers scrambled to draw other bidders into the fray and grab some...
...collective id of the players was already breathtaking. Now comes Barry Diller -- hypersmart, overweeningly arrogant, terrifyingly blunt -- teamed up with John Malone, who is said to operate in a perpetual suffer-no-fools, scorched-earth mode...
...narrative gets richer. A decade ago, Diller brilliantly ran Paramount under Martin Davis, and the antipathy today is intense and mutual, although not, according to two entertainment power brokers close to Diller, an important impetus for the current takeover attempt -- just a "cherry on the sundae," says...
...Turner, the freewheeling founder of CNN, who just last month struck a deal to buy two much smaller movie companies. On Friday he was given the go-ahead by his board -- which includes representatives from his big investors, TCI and Time Warner -- to explore a rival offer. Barry Diller, chairman of the QVC shopping network, is also interested, as is Blockbuster Entertainment. Further tangling the web: TCI chairman John Malone, who is Diller's equity partner as well as Turner's, could make a bid either alone or in conjunction with the other two. Such suitors could in part...