Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, May 12, 1999
Time Warner unit sells shares to public
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. -- Time Warner Telecom Inc., whose local telephone businesses are scattered from New York to Hawaii, raised $252 million in an initial stock sale to repay debt. The Greenwood Village, Colo.-based company today sold 18 million shares at $14 each, $3 more than the $9-to-$11 range set by Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter & Co., which handled the sale.Oceanic Communications, which provides phone service to Oahu businesses in competition with GTE Hawaiian Tel, is the local arm of Time Warner Telecom. The stock sale represented an 18 percent stake and gave the company a market value of $1.39 billion. Time Warner Inc., which owns the second-largest U.S. cable TV network as well as Warner Bros. and entertainment companies, has a 51 percent stake in the phone company.
USA Networks drops deal for Lycos
NEW YORK -- USA Networks Inc., the media company run by Barry Diller, dropped its plan to buy Internet search service Lycos Inc. because of opposition from Lycos shareholders. Lycos's shares had declined by more than one-third after Diller proposed combining the companies in February. The Waltham, Mass.-based company's shares recouped about 35 percent of that loss as opposition to the plan increased, and rose $10.37 to $108.62 in early-afternoon trading, Bloomberg News reported.