Clear Channel OKs private acquisition
SAN ANTONIO — Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation’s biggest radio station operator, said Thursday it has agreed to be acquired for about $18.7 billion by an investment group.
The transaction would be one of the biggest deals in which a company has been taken private, and showcases the vast sums that buyout groups have been able to assemble to acquire public companies.
An investor group led by Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Bain Capital Partners LLC is paying $37.60 in cash for each share of Clear Channel, a 10.2 percent premium over its closing price on Wednesday. The buyers are also assuming about $8 billion in debt.
San Antonio-based Clear Channel’s shares jumped $1.33, or 3.9 percent, to $35.45 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange after rising earlier to a new 52-week high of $35.88.
The company said in a regulatory filing that it doesn’t expect any senior management changes or significant layoffs.
Radio stocks have fallen out of favor on Wall Street in recent years amid sluggish advertising revenues and competition from the boom in portable listening devices like Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods and the growth of satellite radio.
Since January of 2000, Clear Channel stock has fallen from a high of more than $91.
“A federal judge on Thursday barred a former Adelphia Communications Corp. executive from ever serving again as an officer or director of a publicly traded company.
Ruling in a case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the judge said former Adelphia vice president Michael C. Mulcahey had helped the former cable TV giant’s founding family engage in a huge fraud that contributed to the company’s 2002 collapse.
Mulcahey was acquitted of criminal fraud charges in 2004, but the SEC sought regulatory sanctions for his conduct.
“US Airways pilots are demanding the airline finish contract negotiations with them before it moves to acquire rival Delta.
More than 200 of the pilots belonging to the Air Line Pilots Association picketed at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Thursday, a day after US Airways Group Inc. announced a hostile cash and stock bid valued at about $8.8 billion for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc..
US Airways pilots work under two contracts — one for pilots who came from America West Airlines after it bought US Airways out of bankruptcy in September 2005, and another for pilots who were always at US Airways. Contract negotiations began shortly after the airlines combined.