Flash! Liberty Media bids over $1 billion for Barnes & Noble
Thanks to one of my regular readers (and commenters), Edward Boyhan, for the heads-up on this one.
Liberty Media, which bought Sirius XM Radio at a low point, has put in a bid for Barnes & Noble of over $1 billion.
That’s a good sign for NOOK owners: since it is a media company, it undoubtedly wants to move into e-books. They also own Starz…and the Atlanta Braves.
Part of the controversy inside Barnes & Noble has been the issue of Leonard Riggio, who built B&N as the brand it is, and is currently the Chair. There’s been infighting, but the Liberty deal would include keeping Riggio in charge.
B&N stock was way up on the offer. That doesn’t necessarily mean that stockholders approve of this deal…they probably rightly assume that there may be other offers. It’s definitely a vote of confidence in the NOOK. This was also a good time to make an offer…B&N has some NOOK announcement coming on May 24 (it may be an entry-level model), and that might drive the price up a bit.
A new Kindle (or tablet) doesn’t affect Amazon’s stock as much…since that’s a small part of Amazon (as compared to e-books and B&N).
Anyway, interesting news!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
May 20, 2011 at 6:53 pm |
A little more info/color on the BN deal from the WSJ
http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1262076936
June 22, 2011 at 1:04 am |
[…] sales are up…a lot. B&N is entertaining a purchase offer from Liberty Media, and they like to take a challenged business and flip […]