Word: rtl
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...tries to do so, he will have another $6.2 billion in cash, due in January from AOL Time Warner as part-payment for Bertelsmann's 49% stake in AOL Europe. At the moment TV is Bertelsmann's best business, thanks to the February purchase of a majority stake in RTL, the biggest producer of programming outside Hollywood. But he is determined to prove that fans will pay for music downloaded from...
...BECKER HAS DONE WELL WITH HIS THREE MERCEDES DEALERSHIPS outside Berlin and by lending his name to AOL, DaimlerChrysler, Völkl rackets and the rtl television network. But his venture online was less successful. The German sports site Sportgate, of which Becker owned 60%, shut down two weeks ago, just three months after launch, with insiders blaming disagreements among the shareholders. In 1999, Becker's stint as Germany's Davis Cup manager also ended in failure, largely because he couldn't get along with one of the country's leading players, Nicolas Kiefer. That same year Becker...
...shares. The 166-year-old company, owner of Random House publishers in the U.S., book clubs in Europe and a stable of newspapers and magazines worldwide, has always been privately owned by the reclusive Mohn family. Under the terms of the latest deal, however, Bertelsmann is acquiring 30% of RTL's shares-it already owns 37%-from Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, a Belgian investment firm owned by billionaires Albert Fr?re and Paul Desmarais. Instead of cash, GBL agreed to take 25.1% of Bertelsmann shares. More importantly, the deal allows GBL to sell its shares on the stock market in three...
...Lately Bertelsmann has been reorganizing its online assets. This month the company sold its Broadband Group to RTL for $12 million. RTL is already established on the Net; now it gets Bertelsmann's programming heft as well.?"It doesn't matter whether consumers access over mobile phones, their car, their home stereos, television or their personal computers," says Andreas Schmidt, Bertelsmann eCommerce chief. "We want to be able to offer our full catalog anytime anywhere...
...What next? The RTL stock swap left intact a cash horde of more than $10 billion, which Bertelsmann earned from its sale of stock in AOL after the online service announced its merger with Time Warner (TIME's parent). Though global in outlook, Bertelsmann has relatively few broadcast and Internet assets in North America, so the German giant could soon be trolling for bargains among companies that have been bloodied by the precipitous fall of the U.S. high-tech stock market nasdaq. The RTL deal also provided outsiders an intriguing glimpse into Bertelsmann's finances. Company officials...