Simpson Thacher is advising the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of The DIRECTV Group, Inc. (“DTVG”) in connection with the combination of DTVG with Liberty Entertainment, Inc. (“LEI”), a company to be split-off from Liberty Media Corporation.
DTVG is a world-leading provider of digital television entertainment services. Through its subsidiaries and affiliated companies in the United States, Brazil, Mexico and other countries in Latin America, DTVG provides digital television service to more than 17.6 million customers in the United States and about 5.6 million customers in Latin America.
In the transaction, LEI and DTVG will merge with subsidiaries of a newly formed subsidiary of DTVG that will be called DIRECTV. As a result of the mergers, DIRECTV will become the parent company of DTVG and LEI. The mergers will occur after completion of the split-off of LEI from Liberty Media.
The mergers are subject to the satisfaction of various conditions and are currently expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009.
The Simpson Thacher team working on this deal includes: Dick Beattie, Marni Lerner, Katie Sudol, Sean Murphy and Jason Breen (M&A); Gary Mandel and Noah Beck (Tax); and Peter Kazanoff (Litigation).