Time Inc shares soared more than 20% in trading Monday after The New York Post first broke the story about the buyout rejection from an investor group that included Len Blavatnik, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Ynon Kreiz.
This after the company’s shares lost more than 25 percent of their value in the more than two years since it was formally spun off in June 2014 from its parent company Time Warner.
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There was no reason given as to why the Time Inc. board rejected the Len Blavatnik’s bid.
Time inc. owns over 100 magazine brands, most notably its flagship Time but also People magazine, Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine and Fortune. The company was spun off from Time Warner in 2014.
According to the New York Post the publisher has rejected an unsolicited bid at $18 a share, which would have been a 30% premium to the stock’s recent trading price. The offer backed by Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, the founder and chairman of Access Industries, a holding company with entertainment assets that include Warner Music Group; Edgar Bronfman Jr., whos Seagram Company turned into music and movie investments and the Israeli businessman Ynon Kreiz, an investor in the entertainment industry, who most recently sold Maker Studios to Disney for $670 million.
A person familiar with the deal told Tech website Recode that Time Inc. rejected the proposal, which has been in the works for months, a couple of weeks ago.
All reports agrees that Time Inc., needs to transform itself from a print company to a digital company, while the investor group has no experience in publishing.
