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Weekly Lists
November 24, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 25
bne:TMT
CEFC and Penta reportedly team up to bid for CME
CEFC, the acquisitive Chinese energy group, and Penta Investments, the closely-held Slovak financial group, are bidding together for Time Warner’s stake in Central European Media Enterprises (CME), which runs television stations across Central and Southeastern Europe, according to a Reuters report.
If the bid were successful, it would represent a big step by a politically well-connected Chinese company into Europe’s media. CEFC has long been rumoured to be close to China’s military intelligence. CME’s most profitable TV stations are in the Czech Republic and Romania. It also operates stations in Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria.
According to Reuters, CEFC will provide most of the financing for any deal. Nasdaq-listed CME has a market capitalisation of $623mn and more than $1bn in debt. Time Warner owns a 46.5% stake but this rises to 75% if it exercises its warrants.
Time Warner has been trying to offload CME since it accepted a takeover bid from telecom AT&T in October last year.
Russian online giant Mail.ru Group, owned by tycoon Alisher Usmanov, is launching a professional cybersport league, the company announced.
The first game in the league will be Warface, a shooter that Mail.ru has been running since 2013.
Shortly, Mail.Ru Group's cybersport league will start signing deals with sponsors, partners and platforms, and it also considers inviting foreign teams to take part in its tournaments.
Currently, Warface has over 48mn registered users, most of which come from Russia and other CIS countries. In 2016-2017, Mail.ru Group ran over 50 tournaments featuring more than 4,000 teams.
Cybersport in Russia is in its formative stages, and the league will help to sort out some organizational issues and make rules for professional cyber-athletes more transparent and clear.
In 2015, Usmanov invested $100mn in Virtus.Pro, a company in charge of cybersport tournaments, in one of the highest-value cybersport deals in Russia.
The value of the global cybersport market is estimated to reach about $1bn in 2017.
Mail.ru launches professional cybersport league