Word: paramountly
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...come to resemble a three-dimensional chess game, with the winner destined to become king of the global media board. Rumors and speculation ran wild, and stock prices gyrated, as directors of Time met last Thursday and early Friday to consider the hostile $10.7 billion takeover offer that Paramount Communications had put forward the previous week. After deliberating for ten hours on the 34th floor of the Time & Life Building in Manhattan, the board approved a double-barreled response that demonstrated Time's determination to complete its merger with Warner. Declaring that Paramount's $175-a-share...
...proceed with the merger in the face of the Paramount attack, Time abandoned its earlier plan for a debt-free, tax-free stock swap with Warner, and instead launched a $70-a-share tender offer for 100 million of Warner's nearly 200 million shares. That would buy Time a controlling interest in its merger partner; the remaining Warner stock will be acquired later in exchange for cash and securities. The deal will cost Time the kind of debt it and Warner had hoped to avoid -- somewhere between $7 billion and $14 billion. Unlike the original Time-Warner arrangement...
Time took other steps as well. The company swapped some 7 million of its shares for 17.3 million Warner shares, or about 10% in each company. The exchange could have the effect of frustrating Paramount by placing a large block of Time stock in friendly hands, and it gives Time a head start in its acquisition of Warner shares. Time also asked a federal court in New York City to halt the Paramount bid on the grounds that it reflected a "campaign of deception and manipulation" to derail the Time-Warner merger. The suit alleged that Paramount feared the competitive...
...Paramount attacked the revised Time-Warner merger agreement as "a defensive device, pure and simple. From the standpoint of Time shareholders," the company said, "we don't see how it begins to compare with our offer of $175 a share in cash for all shares." Declared Paramount's principal investment banker, Robert Greenhill of Morgan Stanley: "We consider this a very weak response." Paramount repeated an earlier offer to negotiate a higher price, and declared, "We will continue our efforts to acquire Time Inc. with firm determination...
...first look at the proposed Time- Warner cash bid. Time stock, which had closed at 180 on Tuesday on rumors that major new bidders might enter the fray, fell to 162 1/2 a share on Friday. Warner stock rose to 59 1/4, up 3 1/8 for the week, and Paramount, which was also the subject of takeover rumors, closed at 58 1/8, down 1. Many takeover speculators, some of whom own stock in all three companies, seemed perplexed at the growing complexity and unpredictability of the triangular struggle...