Time Warner passes on large deals in Europe

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc. (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chief Executive Richard Parsons on Tuesday threw cold water on speculative British media reports that it might want to sell its U.K. magazine arm IPC, and all but ruled out bidding for European broadcasters such as ITV, ProSiebenSat.1 and Endemol.

As the world's biggest media company, Time Warner is consistently mentioned as a possible buyer when broadcasting or publishing assets come on the market. But Parsons said that big expansion in Europe is not on the agenda.

"I think what you're going to see in (Britain's ITV Plc (ITV.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 (PSMG_p.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)), and even with (Endemol EML.AS) is either a private equity firm that's going to come in with a ton of dough and can leverage it up seven to eight times or a strategic buyer who has consolidation opportunities," Parsons said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

"Neither one of those is us," he said.

Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster, ITV, has been the subject of heated takeover talks in the last few weeks, while the main owners of Germany's biggest commercial broadcaster, ProSiebenSat.1, have put the company up for sale.

Netherlands-based Endemol, behind such hit shows as "Big Brother" and "Deal or No Deal," is also being sold by controlling shareholder Telefonica (TEF.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) of Spain.

"We take a look at almost everything; but for some of these larger assets -- where we don't bring anything special to the party, other than you could say we're in the TV business in the U.S., so we should be in the TV business in Germany -- not currently; we have other more compelling fish to fry," he said.

Parsons said instead Time Warner is looking for smaller bolt-on acquisitions for its revamped AOL Europe unit. It recently sold off its Internet access businesses and retained the advertising-based Web portal end of the business.

"Trying to find some assets to feed that strategy is interesting to us," he said.

Regarding its UK magazine arm, Parsons said Time Warner is trying to migrate its best brands, which include "Marie Claire" and "In Style," to the online world, just as it is doing in the United States.

"We like the magazine business. It has a lot of continued vitality and I think the challenge for the magazine business both here and in the UK is to hold on to the core business to the extent we can and migrate very strong brands into the digital space; and we're doing that here and we're doing that in London," Parsons said.

"At this point in the time, we're not planning to exit the business in London. IPC is the Time Inc. of the UK. It's got the strongest market position there, and it's got the strongest brands, and we think those brands can live online as well as ink-on-paper form; and that's our strategy, to do in the UK what we're doing in the U.S."