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Media moguls Greg Dyke, Lord Hollick and Stephen Grabiner may launch an audacious £6 billion bid for ITV, City sources said last night. The three work for private equity houses that have held talks about forging an alliance to bid for Britain's largest commercial terrestrial broadcaster.
Dyke, the former BBC director-general who resigned after the Hutton inquiry, and Grabiner, ex-managing director of the Daily Telegraph, advise venture capitalist firm Apax. Hollick, recently appointed to KKR, the US private equity group, said last week that buying back ITV 'would have a nice ring to it. I wouldn't rule anything out'.
The Labour peer used to own the Anglia and Meridian franchises before selling them to Granada at the top of the market in 2000.
Analysts last week were sceptical Hollick could pull a bid off with KKR alone. 'He would need to find a partner. ITV is valued on the stock market at £4.5bn, and then he would have to pay a 30 per cent premium on top,' said one broker. 'That's a big bite.'
But bringing in Dyke and Grabiner at Apax as part of a consortium bid would solve the problem at a stroke.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1391288,00.html?gusrc=rss
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