Nielsen, TV Ratings Giant, Agrees to $16 Billion Private Equity Takeover

Mar 30, 2022
Nielsen, TV Ratings Giant, Agrees to $16 Billion Private Equity Takeover

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The media measurement agency Nielsen Holdings, going through intense competitors and criticism because it tries to make the transition to digital viewers monitoring from its longstanding TV enterprise, mentioned on Tuesday that it had agreed to be acquired by a personal fairness consortium for $16 billion, together with debt.

The group, led by Evergreen Coast Capital — an affiliate of the activist agency Elliott Funding Administration — and Brookfield Enterprise Companions, provided $28 a share for Nielsen. The value was a 60 p.c premium over Nielsen’s inventory worth on March 11, earlier than rumors of a deal surfaced, and a ten.2 p.c enchancment on the consortium’s earlier proposal, which Nielsen rejected this month.

Dave Gregory, a managing companion at Brookfield, mentioned in a press release that Nielsen was “deeply embedded within the media ecosystem.”

“As a personal firm, Nielsen will likely be even higher positioned to ship one of the best measures of shoppers’ quickly altering behaviors throughout all channels and platforms,” he added.

Nielsen has been underneath stress from media platforms and the promoting trade to precisely measure audiences not simply on conventional tv but in addition on streaming providers and the web. Highly effective media executives have complained for years that Nielsen, which is almost a century previous, makes use of antiquated strategies that battle to measure viewers’ new habits.

The Media Ranking Council stripped Nielsen of its accreditation for native and nationwide tv measurement final 12 months. Final month, Discovery and Omnicom Media Group mentioned that promoting purchasers together with AT&T and State Farm would experiment with utilizing video viewers estimates from Comscore and VideoAmp, two different media measurement corporations. Final week, NBCUniversal mentioned it could supply advertisers ensures utilizing knowledge from iSpot reasonably than relying solely on Nielsen.

Nielsen inventory was up greater than 20 p.c on Tuesday. The corporate can entertain different bids throughout a 45-day go-shop interval. In any other case, the deal is predicted to shut within the second half of the 12 months.

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Supply- nytimes