Milbank Advises ProSiebenSat.1 on Sale of Scandinavia’s Pay-TV Enterprise C More Group to Sweden-Based Broadcaster TV4 Group
Munich, 16 June 2008 – ProSiebenSat.1 Group is to sell C More Group AB to Sweden-based broadcaster TV4. C More Group AB is the holding company responsible for the Pay-TV activities of ProSiebenSat.1 Group in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark which are operated under the brand “Canal+”. The international law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP advised ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG on all corporate, financing and tax law matters related to the transaction. The deal is valued at approximately EUR 320 million. The completion of the transaction is subject to approval by the respective antitrust authorities.
With 26 commercial TV stations and 22 radio networks, ProSiebenSat.1 Group, headquartered in Munich, is one of the largest pan-European broadcasting groups. The core business of the MDAX-listed corporation is Free TV. With more than 6,000 employees in Europe, the group recorded approximately EUR 2.7 billion in revenue in 2007.
Sweden’s TV4 Group operates a number of Free- and Pay-TV channels in Sweden and is part of Bonnier Group, an international family-owned media group. Bonnier Group operates in more than 20 countries in, amongst others, publishing and TV-networks.
The Munich Milbank team representing ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG included Corporate/M&A partner Norbert Rieger, who lead the deal, Corporate/M&A partner Christoph Rothenfußer and associates Martin Erhardt, Daniel Gubitz, Ludger Schult, Tobias Nikoleyczik and Thorsten Führ. Finance partner Thomas Ingenhoven of Frankfurt and Tax associate Thomas Kleinheisterkamp of Munich also participated in the deal.
Rieger’s team has advised ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG for more than ten years on numerous transactions and matters such as its acquisition of the pan-European TV-, radio and print conglomerate SBS Broadcasting Group in mid-2007; its takeover by private equity investors KKR and Permira at the end of 2006; and its intended merger with Axel Springer AG in mid-2006. In addition, Rieger’s team represented ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG in its appraisal proceedings before the Higher Court of Munich following the statutory merger of ProSieben and Sat.1 in 2000, in which the claim of several shareholders for cash compensation was irrevocably rejected by the Higher Court of Munich.
About Milbank
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP is a pre-eminent global law firm that for more than 140 years has provided innovative legal solutions in many of the world’s largest, most complex, “first-ever” corporate transactions and litigation. Our transactional expertise includes capital markets, corporate finance and transactions, project finance, acquisition finance, and other major fields of law practice. Milbank litigation teams resolve disputes involving mergers and acquisitions, proxy battles, financings and securities offerings, intellectual property, white collar crime, and corporate restructurings, among others. Our clients range from prominent multinational financial, industrial and commercial enterprises to governments, institutions and individuals. The Firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington, DC.
Milbank set up its first European office in London in 1979. The firm’s German offices were opened in Frankfurt in 2001 and in Munich in 2004. Milbank’s European presence has more than doubled in the last two years with growing practices in capital markets, corporate, finance, private equity, outsourcing and litigation. By combining the skill and experience of the lawyers in Milbank's German offices with that of the finance, corporate and tax lawyers based in other Milbank offices, in particular London and New York, Milbank Germany offers its clients fully integrated legal advice at the highest level in these core areas under German, English and US law.