General Electric Co may be closer to selling control of NBC Universal to Comcast Corp after Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt met with NBC’s minority owner Vivendi SA, people with knowledge of the situation said.
The talks with Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy were held in France yesterday and may lead to an agreement in principle, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.
Immelt is negotiating a value for NBC Universal to persuade Paris-based Vivendi to sell its 20 per cent stake and let GE push ahead with plans to sell a controlling interest to Comcast, the largest US cable-TV service. They are less than $500 million apart and are discussing how much cash Vivendi may receive before the Comcast deal is completed, the people said.
Vivendi’s deliberations are the key to GE’s plans to create a joint venture combining NBC Universal’s film, cable-television and theme-park properties with networks owned by Philadelphia- based Comcast. Comcast would own 51 per cent and may acquire full ownership over time. Vivendi may still decide not to sell.
GE, the world’s biggest maker of power-generation equipment, was leaning toward allowing an initial public offering of Vivendi’s holding as talks stalled last weekend, a person with knowledge of the situation said earlier this week. GE is committed to forming the venture with Comcast, people with knowledge of those discussions have said.
Comcast and Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE value NBC Universal at about $30 billion, people familiar with the discussions said this month. That implies about $6 billion for Vivendi’s stake.
GE and Comcast haven’t commented publicly on their discussions. Anne Eisele, a GE spokeswoman, Comcast’s Jennifer Khoury and Antoine Lefort, a Vivendi spokesman, declined to comment.
A change in ownership of New York-based NBC Universal hinges on Vivendi deciding to sell during an annual window that opened on November 15 and runs through December 10 each year through 2016. GE has the right of first refusal to negotiate a purchase of the NBC Universal stake or an IPO.
Vivendi would like to sell its stake, Chief Financial Officer Philippe Capron had said on November 19. Vivendi’s NBC Universal stake is valued on the company’s 2008 balance sheet at about ¤4.3 billion ($6.5 billion).
“We are not interested in staying on board a new GE- Comcast ownership of NBCU, so yes, we would exit,” Capron said at a conference in Barcelona. “This year the situation is a bit more complex. We are not forced to do anything. We could just also say no.”
Immelt, 53, said last month he is studying “all the options” for NBC Universal.
“We’ve done all the planning to see if an IPO would be fine,” Immelt said on October 21 in San Francisco. “You’ve got to think a couple years ahead in the space and ask: ‘Might there be partnerships to run the company in a better way?’ In this case, we’ve got all the options.”
