Carlton’s bid for European internet alliance founders

LONDON (Brand Republic) - Carlton Communications’ plans for a cross-border European internet alliance ended yesterday, after three European media companies failed to commit to a financial investment.

According to a Financial Times report, Carlton was unable to secure investments from Italy’s Mediaset, Spain’s Telecinco and Germany’s Kirch. Under the planned agreement, each company, along with France’s TF1, would have invested €50m (£30.1m) to develop internet businesses in Europe.

Carlton said it will now abandon these ambitious plans and will concentrate instead on a joint venture with French company TF1.

The news came as Carlton announced it has agreed in principle to sell its video film processing business Technicolor to Thomson Multimedia for £1.4bn. The deal also involved Carlton acquiring a 5.5% stake in Thomson, and investing $15m (£10.3m) in TAK, Thomson’s interactive TV joint venture with Microsoft.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com