Macquarie after C&M
August 26, 2007
A consortium including Macquarie Bank's South Korean private equity arm and MBK Partners is set to acquire a 30 per cent stake in the country's second biggest cable TV group and targeting the remaining shares. Macquarie Korea Fund has signed a preliminary deal to purchase the stake from Goldman Sachs for about $650m (E479m), and agreed to a follow-on deal to jointly hold the stake with MBK.
The sale will net Goldman Sachs a handsome profit of more than $500m, with the US bank having purchased the stake in C&M for Won140bn (E109m) in 2004. C&M is the biggest cable TV operator in the Seoul metropolitan area with 2m subscribers, in a sector expected to thrive following an expected deregulation of the market.