Fate of TVN's ownership settled by eurobond issue

By the end of 2003 the ITI Group had obliged itself to purchase a 30.4% stake in television station TVN from its Luxembourg-based partner SBS Broadcasting. However, it turns out that it will be the station itself which will acquire the shares, and in order to do that it has issued eurobonds, which were sold yesterday with a significant over-subscription. The bonds, which were issued by TVN Finance Corporation, a company specially created for this purpose, had to deal with demand almost double the number of bonds it had to sell. The price was set at a level which guarantees profitability at 9.5%. In this way, TVN has raised EUR 235, out of which EUR 131.5 million will be used for the purchase of its own shares from SBS, EUR 47 million will be used to repay its liabilities to BPH PBK, while EUR 6 million will be transferred to the ITI Group. Following the transaction with SBS, the shares will be annulled. This way 100% of the TV station will be directly and indirectly controlled by ITI Group and people running the company. (Parkiet, p. 3; Puls Biznesu, p. 12) A.K.