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EM.TV 'faces new bid'
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January 19, 2001: 8:50 a.m. ET
Report: investors mull possible competing bid for German media firm
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LONDON (CNNfn) - EM.TV, the embattled media firm behind the Muppets, saw its shares rocket Friday after a report said an investor group is pooling funds for a bailout.
Unidentified "international investors" have formed a consortium to counter a rescue plan for troubled EM.TV by fellow German media company Kirch, the Financial Times Deutschland reported Friday.
Michael Birnbaum, a spokesman for EM.TV, declined to comment. 
Meanwhile, Reuters reported an unspecified British investment bank is prepared to buy EM.TV's 50 percent stake in Formula One motor racing. EM.TV paid $1.65 billion for that stake in March – and it could be forced to buy more.
The Reuters report, citing industry sources, said the bank would pay about one-third of the cost paid by EM.TV for the stake – adding that Kirch would be "inclined" to accept that offer.
Shares of EM.TV rose 43 percent to  9.10 in Frankfurt Friday afternoon. Early in the session, it had gone as high as 10.20, for a gain of 61 percent.
The shares were hit last month after the company – once a star performer on the Neuer Markt – issued a shock profit warning. The stock had been as high as 120 per share last February.
As of Thursday's close, the company was now worth about 1.5 billion ($1.4 billion), down from 18 billion in February.
EM.TV faces a big bill in May because Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone can force the German firm to buy a further 25 percent stake in SLEC, the Formula One holding company. That could cost EM.TV something like $1 billion.
Negotiators representing the investor group have met with Ecclestone in an attempt to buy those rights to sell the SLEC stake, the newspaper said.
Under the terms of a rescue deal announced on Dec. 4, Kirch will take a 16.74 percent stake in EM.TV and buy almost half of EM.TV's 50 percent stake in Formula One holding company SLEC. Kirch would take 25 percent of the voting rights in EM.TV.
Since then the deal appears to have run into trouble however, and sources close to the negotiations told Reuters this week that EM.TV was not prepared to accept some of Kirch's demands.
-- from staff and wire reports 
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