“Liberty Media Corp Chairman John Malone, who has bought and sold cable and media companies for decades, might be the most popular billionaire roaming the Sun Valley Resort as deal making returns to the spotlight at the annual gathering of media and tech moguls,” Liana B. Baker reports for Reuters.
“Known as ‘the King of Cable,’ the 72-year-old is one of the 300 or so executives expected to attend the conference that runs Tuesday through Friday in Idaho,” Baker reports. “The gathering, hosted by Allen & Co, a New York-based investment bank, has a history of launching landmark media deals such as Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2009, but has been quieter in recent years.”
“The guests, who shed their suits for khakis and fleece vests for the week in Sun Valley, attend lectures on politics, business and other subjects, which are closed to the press,” Baker reports. “They are given plenty of time to socialize at group lunches, dinners and barbecues. Close attention is paid to who huddles with whom and who takes bike rides together.”
“Bob Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney Co., Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS Corp, and Rupert Murdoch of Twenty-First Century Fox, formerly News Corp, will be hiking or playing golf with their fellow moguls,” Baker reports. “On the tech side, guests will include Facebook Inc. founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, Google Inc’ Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.”
MacDailyNews Take: Is Sergey going to wear his dorktastic spywear glasses? Likely not, if he wants to attend ever again.
Baker reports, “A year ago, Malone was vocal at the Sun Valley conference about his plans to gain control of Sirius XM (SIRI.O) without paying any premium. He held court outside the Duchin Lounge late at night for an impromptu press conference. This time, Malone will be talking up cable TV… ‘Malone has created a currency in Charter and wants to use it to consolidate,’ said Todd Mitchell, a Brean Capital analyst in New York. ‘We believe Time Warner Cable is the prize on Malone’s mind.'”
Read more in the full article here.
A bunch of the richest, most influential people in the world standing around in awkward silence at a barbecue.
“Umm, anyone catch season 3 of Game of Thrones,” Someone finally says.
Laughter all around. Then more awkward silence.
Someone else pipes up, “I paid billions for it, but I didn’t see it.”
Everyone nods knowingly and takes a sip of their lightly flavored water.
Ahhhhhh Jason, bring us another round here please. Thank you.
Dorktastic glasses.
LOL. That was good.
Who the hell cares? Please, who?
I wonder if global poverty & or hunger is on the agenda for discussion???
and what MDN says about Sergey will no doubt be repeated all around the World. I wonder if Google include the cost of bouncers to protect the wearers, though as the photographing of children over here has become almost illegal these days I doubt that will be sufficient to avoid arrest.