South Africa: major media groups make major media moves
The first was an announcement from Times Media Group that it would be leaving the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as major shareholder, the Blackstar Group, made on offer to buy the shares it doesn’t already own. And the second was Naspers’ decision to unbundle its printing division, the Paarl Media Group, into a separately listed company called Novus.
The Times Media Group transaction will take place as Blackstar mergest with Tiso Investment Holdings, which has an interest in Kagiso Tiso Investment Holdings. Kagiso, of course, has stakes in radio and more recently, television in the form of Glow TV and a 50 per cent stake on production house, Urban Brew. Business Day reported that TMG investors would now have the choice of “1.45 Blackstar shares for each Times Media share or a cash payout of R22 per share. The cash portion will be limited to a maximum R500m”.
