Video from EconAds: Interview: Nancy Peretsman, Managing Director, Allen & Co
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
At our EconAds conference last week, the most anticipated part was the interview with Nancy Peretsman, managing director at Allen & Co...among the most powerful bankers in the media sector, she has been part of marquee deals such as Google's (NSDQ: GOOG) 5 percent stake in AOL (NYSE: TWX), the sale of Bebo and Tacoda to AOL, News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) buyout of Dow Jones, and now, is in the middle of Microsoft-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) deal, though she did not divulge many details on it. The video from last week is embedded below (RSS readers will have to click through).
A key theme of the discussion: It's not really sellers, it's about buyers. When the buyers are hungry, times are good and premium companies can get the multiples they want. Take Bebo, for example. "I think people feel like that was a pretty good valuation for Bebo," Peretsman said to quite a few chuckles. But she defended Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes against the notion that AOL overpaid and that was that. If you decide that you need to be in social networking, and you need to get international, what else is there? The full writeup of my Q&A with her is here.
By Rafat Ali