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July 31st, 2007

The Redstone Two-Step

Posted by: Paul Thomasch
Tags: Uncategorized

Sumner Redstone just won’t stop dancing.

CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc.’s executive chairman keeps getting questions about whether he would take one of his media companies private — and he keeps dodging the issue.

His latest dance came during a conference call to discuss CBS’ quarterly earnings, when he was asked what would “trigger” a decision to go private. Back in June, he fielded a similar question during an interview on CNBC.

Here’s what he said on Tuesday: 

“(We) like the companies the way they are. We think there is an enormous amount of growth in them without any great strategic change. 
However, and I’m very clear on this, we do consider all alternatives. There has been a lot of discussion inside and outside about taking one of these companies private. 
What I can say is, I’ve said it before, it’s not on the front burner. But you can rest assured it will receive the consideration it should as we always consider what’s good for these companies.”

Why the equivocation? Given the the skittishness of the debt markets, this would seem a reasonable time to rule out going private. What do you think? What’s Redstone got in mind?
   

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