Media giant eyes deals in Europe

Michael Hedges January 15, 2008

With so many investors running, not walking, away from media deals at least one media giant still has an appetite.

"There are several important companies in Europe in which we are interested in 2008," said Dogan Yayin Holding (DYH) CEO Mehmet Ali Yalcindag on the Turkish business channel CNBC-E (Monday, January 14), reported by Reuters. He gave no details, nor his cell-phone number. DYH is sitting on a market capitalization of €1.9 billion, as of September 2007. Its ad market share in Turkey exceeds 40%.

DYH has looked at big media deals in Europe before; notably bidding for ProSiebenSat1. They lost out to private equity companies KKR and Permira. On the rebound, DYH sold 25% of its television company to Axel Springer.

It’s a pattern. Yalcindag mentioned that he’d be interested in an outside investor in then D-Smart digital pay-TV platform. A year ago Lone Pine Capital bought an 8% stake in Dogan Yayin Media. Deutsche Bank bought 22% of DYH’s newspaper division Dogan Gazetecilik. With the Turkish Parliament strongly considering a change in the foreign investment cap from 25% to 50% DYH, as Turkey’s biggest media company, will attract even more investment capital.

The only question for Mr. Yalcindag is where to put it. He gave no indication in the TV interview. But, anybody interested can find him at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week. He’s hosting the Turkish Gala at WEF January 26th.