Barry Diller, Condé Nast Portfolio cover star, has decisively prevailed in his fight with John Malone, the largest shareholder of the company Diller runs. Malone’s Liberty Media won’t appeal the court decision which went in Diller’s favor in March, has agreed to Diller’s breakup plan, has agreed not to increase its shareholding, and seems to be at peace with its 62% supervoting control of the company being diluted down to a simple 30% stake.
Rarely are such fights settled so unequivocally; one can’t imagine that John Malone is a happy mogul this morning. At this point, I doubt he’ll just passively sit on his 30% stakes in Lending Tree, Ticketmaster, and the like: he’ll want to do some deals with those shareholdings as soon as the economic climate is right.