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Can this media who’s-who find the answer for Yahoo?
July 9, 2008
(LA media correspondent Matt Garrahan is reporting for the rest of this week from Sun Valley, Idaho)
Powerbrokers, moguls and billionaires from the media and technology worlds have converged on this quiet mountain retreat in Idaho for the annual Allen & Co get-together.
Started 20 years ago by Herb Allen, the powerful media banker, as a relaxing time-out for his clients to meet and schmooze, this has come to be known as a place where deals get done. Most famously, Michael Eisner and Bob Iger struck a deal for Walt Disney to buy Capital Cities-ABC on the Sun Valley golf course in 1996.
Expectations are certainly low for a round of deal-making this year. With the US economy in the doldrums and media stocks in a slump – Disney and Time Warner have all seen steep share declines this year – most media moguls are keeping their heads down and attending to business. There is one long-overdue deal, however, that is on everyone’s lips: a resolution of Microsoft’s pursuit of Yahoo.
To judge by the relaxed mood in the bar of the Sun Valley Lodge on Tuesday night, the Idaho mountain air may be just the thing to calm the tensions that this saga has aroused recently. Some of the main actors in the Yahoo drama were at hand, mingling with the media world’s elite.
Gordon Crawford of Capital Global Investors, which has a stake of more than 5 per cent in Yahoo, enjoyed a drink with Jim Wiatt, senior partner at the William Morris agency. Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television was also at the table, while James and Lachlan Murdoch flitted in and out of the room, drinks in hand, popping out to the terrace to smoke a cigarette.
Google’s Eric Schmidt, who recently pulled off a search advertising alliance with Yahoo that has raised the bar even higher for Microsoft, made a brief appearance in the bar, as did Michael Eisner, the former Disney chief executive who has become a big investor in digital media via his Tornante vehicle.
Others in attendance at this year’s conference include Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and Jerry Yang.
Relations between some of these characters have certainly been frosty recently. According to Allthingsd, Mr Crawford just gave Mr Yang a dressing down and said that he’s considering throwing his weight behind Carl Icahn, the billionaire financier who is leading a proxy fight to remove the Yahoo board. But if there’s to be a final resolution of the Yahoo mess, Sun Valley could be the place for it to happen.
Matthew.Garrahan@ft.com
