Liberty Media saves the day, dumps over half a billion into Sirius XM
D-Day has arrived for the struggling satellite radio provider and for the time being, all is not lost. Liberty Media has indeed swooped in and pumped $530 million into Sirius XM in order to prevent the company from defaulting on $175 million in debt owed to Echostar today. Echostar’s Charlie Ergen had offered to take control of the company in an effort to “help” it avoid bankruptcy but the Sirius XM board seemingly wouldn’t even consider Ergen’s offer as a possibility. Instead, Sirius opted to work with Echostar’s biggest competitor – Liberty Media is the majority owner of DIRECTV while Echostar owns and operates the DISH Network fleet of satellites – giving Liberty 40 percent of the company and two seats on its board in exchange for the loan, $250 million of which will be funded today. Zing! Despite the fact that Ergen will get his $175 million in full today, something tells us he won’t be doing the happy dance.
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