Apollo Global Management Inc. and Standard General L.P. are close to acquiring Tegna Inc., a television broadcasting company, in a deal valued at $24 a share as per information provided by people with knowledge in the matter.
The acquisition without any official announcement
According to people who did not wish to be identified, there was no announcement on the development on Tuesday as the matter is still private. According to them, buyers have agreed to pay the additional amount for every share in a nod to the antitrust scrutiny for the deal.
As reported by Bloomberg News, Apollo Global Management Inc. and Standard General L.P will pay every month an additional amount for the extra time the regulatory review takes place after the initial period.
The price per share increases by 5 cents incrementally every month for the first nine months and, after that, 12.5 cents per share in the 15th month and beyond. As reported earlier by Bloomberg News, Apollo Global will get preferred shares in Tegna and will not have any voting rights.
The people who have information in this deal say that no final decision has yet arrived, and talks could still fail.
Standard General, Apollo Global, and Tegna declined to comment on the development.
The share price Tegna closed at $ 20.95 in New York trading on Friday. The market valuation of Tegna Inc., based out of Virginia, was $4.6 billion.
Both Apollo Global and Standard General had offered $ 22 per share for acquiring Tegna in September last year, as reported by Bloomberg News then. According to people familiar with the matter, the bid was later increased to $22.65 and then to $24 per share. Media Moghul, Byron Allen, competitors to Tegna, teamed up with Ares Management Corp and had offered $23 per share last year.
The agreement would culminate in the yearlong saga of takeover for Tegna, which currently owns 64 News Stations throughout the U.S. and owns media properties like True Crime Network, as per information on its website.
Apollo Global was in talks two years ago about acquiring the company, but the discussions ended in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic that saw the markets turn upside down. Negotiations were restarted in 2021, with the parties slugging it out over issues that included Tegna’s concern that Regulators would scuttle the deal considering that Apollo Global had an ownership stake in Rival Cox Media Group.
Standard General, founded in 2007 by Soo Kim and is based out of New York, is known to manage event-driven funds has a history of acquiring companies in the past. It bought 1740 Radio Shacks in 2015 via General wireless Inc. and the Radio Shack Brand in a bankruptcy auction. It had staged two earlier unsuccessful boardroom battles at Tegna in recent years and on both occasions argued that Tegna was underperforming and needed a shakeup.
