More legal shenanigans for a Murdoch owned company. Richard Branson has called on the Office Of Fair Trading to intervene after BSkyB bought a stake in ITV. And to be honest, he's probably right to, because it's widely thought that Sky bosses bought a 17.9% stake in ITV on Friday principally to put themselves in a position where they could block any attempt by cable operator NTL to stage a merger with the UK's biggest commercial terrestrial broadcaster. NTL, of course, expressed an interest in merging with ITV earlier this month.
Branson is involved in all this, of course, because NTL recently merged with Virgin Mobile, and will rebrand as Virgin Media in the new year. Following that deal Branson is NTL's biggest single shareholder. He said this weekend that BSkyB's share trading was "a blatant attempt to distort competition ... by blocking any attempt to create a strong and meaningful competitor", and that he was considering complaining to the European Commission and UK media regulator OfCom as well as the OFT. He continued: "BSkyB is positioned to strongly influence ITV's operations in a manner that favours BSkyB's long-term plans rather than the interests of the other 82% percent of ITV shareholders who weren't offered a sweetheart deal on Friday".
Branson's spokesman, Will Whitehorn, added that Sky's share purchase was "a blatant breach, if not of the broadcasting legislation, then of the Enterprise Act", adding that Sky had made it clear that it "did not intend to be a passive investor" in ITV.
But BSkyB hit back at Branson, pointing out that current media ownership regulations allow the satellite broadcaster to buy up to 20% of ITV if it should so wish - meaning its share purchase was entirely legit. In a statement issued this weekend, BSkyB said: "Sir Richard seems to believe that he and his partners in NTL-Telewest have a unique right to acquire ITV".
Meanwhile the Mail On Sunday quoted a Sky insider who said that his company had taken considerable legal advice before acquiring ITV shares, and that they were confident the purchase would be approved should it go before a regulator.