Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Bonus News Story

Google Attempts a Hostile Takeover of Time Warner for $60 billion

Posted: October 31, 2007 11:45 a.m.

PALO ALTO, CA- Earlier today Google Inc (GOOG) made a hostile takeover bid towards Time Warner Inc (TWX) for the amount of $60 billion in debt, cash, and stocks. Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, stated that Time Warner has been “historically open to mergers” and one of the reasons they were looking to purchase Time Warner was because of their “proven track record.” Google has been looking to become a major content distributor and with the possible purchase they’ve found a company with a very reliable content production. When asked where Google came up with the $60 billion price tag, Schmidt broke it down as “$10 billion in cash, $45 billion in stocks, and $5 billion in assumed debt.”

Richard D. Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, answered that this acquisition was “out of the blue” but Time Warner will meet with their board of directors and that they “are considering.”

Both Yahoo! Inc (YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) have been looking to purchase Time Warner in the past. Neither company chose to respond to this recent news.

Paul Kim, an industry analysis, responded that “Time Warner would be foolish not to accept.” Especially with many analyzers speculating that Time Warner’s stock might be over priced. For both parties the deal just “seems to makes sense.”

Of course all of this could be for nothing if the Federal Communications Commission rules against such a large purchase. Even though the FCC has leaned towards letting larger corporations become even larger in the last few years, there are still many fears that these two companies could prove too much and start looking like a possible monopoly.

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