National Amusements Should Again Push for CBS/Viacom, BTIG Analyst Says
National Amusements, controlling shareholder of CBS and Viacom, should force a merger of the two, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield wrote Friday. NA seemingly has no intentions of selling either, and the scale and size of each is such that it's…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
unlikely acquisitions could diversify them away from their legacy businesses and the challenges in the TV advertising and cable network subscription business, he said: Failed individual CBS and Viacom efforts at mergers and acquisitions like CBS-Starz and Viacom-Scripps (see 1707310062) might have gone better if CBS-Viacom were combined. BTIG said a CBS-Viacom brings cost savings from a unified TV and film studio, removes inefficiencies, better positions the combined company for direct-to-consumer business with Viacom producing not-for-linear TV content for CBS All Access, cuts the risk of carriage disputes, helps in the pursuit of other M&A in and outside of the legacy media sector, and would give more cash flow and scale to help pursue sports rights. NA -- which backed and then called off CBS-Viacom talks last year (see 1612120060) -- didn't comment.