Media and technology chiefs are jetting to Sun Valley, Idaho this week for the annual meeting and potentially some deal-making. The exclusive event, sponsored by investment bank Allen & Co., starts 7/8 behind closed doors.
“There always this mystique around Allen & Co.,” Tony Wible, an analyst with Janney Capital Markets, tells Variety. “It’s notorious for pulling a lot of big moguls together in a room and shaking up their industries right after.”
Among those expected to attend are 21st Century Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes, Disney Chairman Robert Iger, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google co-founder Larry Page.
Past years have played a key role in fostering the sale of NBCUniversal to Comcast, Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post and the wedding of Time Warner and AOL.
This year, Sun Valley unfolds at a time of consolidation in the MVPD space, via Comcast-Time Warner Cable and At&T-DirecTV.
Analysts and investors will be watching for signs that Discovery might buy Scripps, Disney will nab Discovery or Google will make an impulse buy. Netflix, which has largely avoided the mergers and acquisitions route while building its streaming empire, could also be a player, Wible said. Of course, most of these deals will never make it to the flirtation phase, let alone get consummated.
“It’s more likely that the smaller guys may look to merge,” said Wible. “There will be more pressure on them to do something.”
“A case can be made that much of the gains in the overall stock market have been fueled more by share repurchases than by a really wonderful performance on the part of these companies,” said Hal Vogel, CEO of Vogel Capital Management. “The gains of the last two or three years might free up cash to do a deal.”
See the full Variety story here.
