Uh oh. This may be bad news bears for Hov. Swedish financial paper Dagens Industri reports that the minority shareholders of Aspiro AB — the streaming company Jay Z recently bid $56 million on, via Shawn Carter Enterprises subsidiary Project Panther Bidco — are preparing to reject his offer. The minority shareholders control 10 percent of the company.
The bid was based on a 57% premium over the company’s stock price the day before the offer was made. Unlike the minority shareholders, the company’s majority shareholders accepted this unanimously. All three sides–the majority and minority shareholders, plus Carter/Project Panther–will now enter negotiations. All parties have until March 11 to accept or reject the offer.
Aspiro’s value is largely derived from WiMP, a streaming service currently available only in Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland and Denmark. It differs slightly from other such services in that it sports localized editorial teams dedicated to constructing highly personalized recommendations lists based on users’ listening histories. Aspiro has over 500,000 subscribers and claims a catalog of over 25 million songs.
Leave a Reply