The deadline isn’t moving by much, but Clear Channel Communications has now extended the expiration date for its bond tender. The new deadline is March 18th, four days later than previously, as Wall Street awaits closing this month on the entire set of transactions to take Clear Channel private. The bond tender pertains to Clear Channel’s 7.65% Senior Notes due 2010 and the 8% Senior Notes of its subsidiary, AMFM Operating Inc., due 2008.
Meanwhile, the related court haggling over the pending sale of Clear Channel Television to Providence Equity Partners’ Newport Television continues, with Wachovia trying to get out of providing lending for the 1.1 billion bucks deal. In the latest round, Wachovia told a Delaware court that Newport was to blame for delaying closing while it negotiated the price down from over 1.2 billion – and that market conditions for Wachovia to syndicate its 500 million piece of the financing deteriorated in the meantime. Closing of the TV sale, however, is not a condition for Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital to buy out the public shareholders of Clear Channel Communications and take the company private.
RBR/TVBR observation: Just standard housekeeping stuff as Clear Channel and its private equity partners juggle all of the balls they have in the air to get this complicated buyout to closing. Some folks on Wall Street got excited last week by a rumor that the 26.7 billion bucks deal was going to closing on Thursday. That didn’t happen, of course, but there’s also nothing new to indicate that the deal will not go to closing, as planned, by the end of this month. That March 18th date for the bond tender may be significant, but it could also easily be moved again.
