The Federal Trade Commission has no problem with Liberty
Media's spinoff of its Starz premium movie channel into a separate stock.
That came in an early termination notice from the FTC on
Tuesday. That means it is ending its competition review of the restructuring
early because it has no competitive issues with the internal restructuring of
the company.
Liberty
last summer announced it would spin off Starz into a separate, publicly
traded company.
Actually, Starz is the technical "spinner," with
the other assets, see below, spun off into Liberty Media Spinco, which will be
renamed Liberty Media Corp., while the existing Liberty Media becomes Starz
LLC.
The company was looking to create a pure play media company
built on Starz and get better value from Wall Street for that and its other
businesses by "reducing the complexity currently involved in understanding
the disparate businesses, assets and liabilities."
Those other assets include Atlanta National League Baseball
Club, Inc. and TruePosition, Inc., equity stakes in Sirius XM Radio and Live
Nation Entertainment, and minority investments in Barnes & Noble, Time
Warner, Time Warner Cable, Viacom and Sprint Nextel Corp.
Liberty has set Jan. 11 as the date of the spin-off.
