THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050575
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DINAH WISENBERG BRIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
Cable shopping network QVC Inc.'s board of directors Thursday approved a sweetened buyout offer from its two largest shareholders, Comcast Corp. and Liberty Media Corp., a source close to QVC said.
Lawyers for QVC, meeting in New York, finished their work on the $46-a-share deal, but Liberty Media and Comcast attorneys were still working on final details Thursday evening, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Liberty, based in Boulder, Colo., had no immediate comment. A spokesman for Philadelphia-based Comcast could not be reached immediately.
Liberty Media and Comcast joined forces last month to purchase the home shopping network for $44 a share, or $1.4 billion, in cash. That offer sabotaged a planned merger between QVC and CBS Inc.
QVC is run by Barry Diller, one of the most prominent executives in the American entertainment industry. Diller, whose ambitions to run a large entertainment company are widely known, hasn't said whether he would remain with QVC if it's purchased by Comcast and Liberty Media.
Diller was expected to become the top executive at CBS if that merger had been successful.
A merger with West Chester, Pa.-based QVC would enable Comcast and Liberty Media to acquire the 65 percent of QVC stock they do not already own and would mark Comcast's first major advance into cable TV programming.
Comcast, which provides cable TV service to about 3 million customers, would obtain access to millions of additional American homes.
Comcast's interest in QVC first became public when it broke up a complex bid by CBS to merge with the shopping network. In an 11th-hour proposal on July 12, Comcast offered to buy QVC for $44 a share in cash and stock.
Then on July 21, Liberty Media joined with Comcast to improve its offer to an all-cash bid.
Liberty Media is a subsidiary of Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable television company. Comcast, the third-largest cable company, currently owns about 16 percent of QVC's stock. TCI owns nearly 20 percent.
QVC employs more than 1,650 people at a telephone order-taking and customer service facility in Chesapeake and a distribution warehouse in Suffolk. The telecommunications center recently moved into a new 53,000-square-foot building behind Greenbrier Mall. by CNB