Report: NBCU Eyes All3Media

LONDON, May 12: NBC
Universal is said to have approached the British production and distribution
firm All3Media about a takeover offer, local press reports indicate.

According to the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, NBCU has asked the firm, founded by
former ITV executives Steve Morrison, Jules Burns and David Liddiment and
majority owned by private-equity firm Permira, for its financial information.

NBC Universal is working
to ramp up its international activities, eyeing the acquisition of two or three
firms in the U.K., the Telegraph
reports, as well as production firms in Germany, Russia and India.

"We want to go into
two or three fast-growing emerging markets and a couple of existing mature
markets where we already have a presence, that are big enough to be meaningful
to us,” Peter Smith, the president of NBC Universal International, told the Telegraph.
"Increasingly, the vast
majority of content on television is locally produced so it makes a lot of
sense to take a position locally."

—By Mansha Daswani