Flash! Liberty Media bids over $1 billion for Barnes & Noble

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!

Reuters article

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.