CanWest, effective owner of Network Ten, has announced that it will buy Canadian specialist Alliance Atlantis Communications (co-owner of the CSI franchise) in partnership with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. This is not a simple deal, and it will have implications for Ten, although speculation in the mainstream media that it will speed up the sale process is almost certainly a load of bollocks.
The basics of the complicated deal are that CanWest and GSCP will buy Alliance Atlantis for $C2.3 billion. They will put the 13 specialist channels into a new company, worth $C1.5 billion. But CanWest will initially (until 2001) only own 17% of this company. In return, CanWest will put up only $C132 million, plus its Global Television Network. Global (despite its name) is Canada’s third national network.
