Sun Valley's cast of media characters

Posted Jul 11th 2007 11:15AM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: Yahoo! (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), General Electric (GE), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Dow Jones and Co (DJ)

DealBook reports that a somewhat surprising cast of characters is arriving at the annual Allen & Co. Sun Valley, media investment conference.

Of all the investment conferences I know, due to its beautiful setting, leading players, and inevitable deal doing, this is the one I most regret not being able to attend. Regrettably, BloggingStocks is not sending me there. (Although to be fair, I never asked because I didn't know about it until today.) However, I can join everyone else in the world and follow along with those who are fortunate enough to attend.

Here's the list of some of the notable characters who have arrived so far:

Discovery Holding Company's (NASDAQ: DISCB) chief executive, David Zaslav,
The News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS) scion, Lachlan Murdoch and its CEO Rupert Murdoch. News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) is experiencing a key week, especially given Tuesday's news that Ronald Burkle, the Los Angeles billionaire, and Brad Greenspan, a founder of MySpace, are believed to be considering a joint bid for Dow Jones.
Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin,
Former Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) CEO Michael Eisner,
Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE: WMG) CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.,
Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg,
Ning, a tech company founded by Marc Andreessen that announced Tuesday it had received $44 million in funding.
Disney's current CEO, Robert Iger,
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.a) CEO Warren Buffett,
General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) Unversal's Ron Meyer,
eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman,
Viacom Inc.'s (NYSE: VIA) Phillipe Dauman, and
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang and the man who recently left the top job at Yahoo!, Terry Semel.

I would not be surprised to see a deal for Facebook emerge from this conference. But I am surprised that Terry Semel and Michael Eisner even showed up.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns General Electric stock, has consulted to News Corp.'s chairman, and has no financial interest in the other securities mentioned in this post.

Tags: brk.a, discb, discovery holdings, DiscoveryHoldings, dj, ebay, facebook, ge, jerry yang, JerryYang, lachlan murdoch, LachlanMurdoch, meg whitman, MegWhitman, michael eisner, MichaelEisner, nws, robert iger, RobertIger, rupert murdoch, RupertMurdoch, siri, warner music group, WarnerMusicGroup, warren buffett, WarrenBuffett, wmg, yhoo

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-11-2007 @ 8:54PM

Randy Smythe said...

Eisner and Semel showed up because they are still looking for work.

Meg Whitman sure sounds out of place there though. Maybe eBay will buy Facebook! :-)