Liberty Media to spin off assets; CEO Greg Maffei to step down at year-end

Liberty Media announced Wednesday it’s spinning off most assets besides Formula One auto racing into a separate publicly traded company, called Liberty Live, and that CEO Greg Maffei is stepping down at year-end.

Chairman John Malone will become interim CEO of Liberty Media. Liberty Media’s investor day is set to take place on Thursday in Manhattan.

After the split, Liberty Media will hold Formula One, which Liberty acquired in 2016 and later spun out as a tracking stock, and MotoGP, upon the closing of that transaction. Liberty Live will hold roughly 69.9 million shares of Live Nation Entertainment, Quint and certain other private assets, according to a release.

The company also announced cable company Charter Communications would acquire Liberty Broadband in an all-stock transaction. In September, Liberty Broadband went public with its aspirations to merge with Charter, in a move to simplify Malone’s portfolio. Liberty owns 26% of Charter shares.

“The split-off of Liberty Live Group into a separate public entity will simplify Liberty Media’s capital structure, should reduce the discount to net asset value of our Liberty Live stock and enhance trading liquidity at both entities,” Maffei said in a release.

Maffei has been part of Liberty since 2005 and has various positions on boards of the company’s assets, including Charter.

Malone is a pioneer of the cable industry, long known as the “cable cowboy,” and has kept his hand in various media assets over the years. He’s been an independent director of Warner Bros. Discovery — initially through Discovery, before the company merged with Warner Bros., under his advisement.

He’s chairman of the board of Liberty Media, Liberty Broadband and Liberty Global. While Malone, 83, has remained an active investor and talking head in the industry, it’s notable that he is taking over as interim CEO of Liberty Media.

A stealthy dealmaker, Malone is known for shrewd financial transactions and spinning out his companies into tracking stocks.

Malone infamously ran and built the cable empire TCI in the 1970s. He sold TCI to AT&T in 1999 for roughly $50 billion.

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