Malone, Diller Shake Hands

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Liberty Media and IAC/InterActiveCorp said on Tuesday that they had settled their differences, paving the way for the division of IAC into five companies, the New York Times reports.


On March 28, a Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled that Barry Diller, the chairman and chief executive of IAC, could go forward with his breakup plan, putting an end to a challenge from Liberty Media, which is controlled by the cable television mogul John C. Malone. Mr. Malone is IAC’s largest shareholder.


The two companies said that Liberty would not appeal the court’s March 28 decision and would no longer oppose IAC’s plan to spin off HSN, the home shopping network business; Ticketmaster, the online box office; LendingTree, the online mortgage broker; and Interval International, a time-share exchange company.


The two sides also said that Liberty would continue to have board representation at each company but had agreed not to increase its stakes in any of them.


The complex battle between Mr. Diller and Mr. Malone occurred because IAC has a dual voting structure. Liberty, with 30 percent of the shares, has a supervoting share of nearly 62 percent. But as a result of an agreement in the early 1990s, Mr. Diller has the right to vote those shares.


In recent years, Mr. Diller assembled an array of online assets, including Ticketmaster, the search engine Ask.com and LendingTree.com, planning to meld them into a cohesive Internet-based business.

That never happened.

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