The investment bankers had gone through the numbers. The lawyers had said their piece. Now, the board of Univision Communications Inc., the nation's largest Spanish-language media company, had a decision to make.
Should it extend its auction to allow its longtime partner, the Mexican media conglomerate Grupo Televisa, to try to beat a higher offer already on the table? Or should it accept that offer of $12.3 billion from a private equity consortium that included billionaire Haim Saban?
Televisa rushed two letters to Univision Chairman and Chief Executive A. Jerrold Perenchio imploring him to continue discussions, saying it was willing to up its bid. And late Monday, in a conference room in Univision's Century City headquarters, a Televisa representative who sits on the board pleaded for more time.
But Perenchio had made up his mind: Televisa was out.
"I never made a dollar waiting for them," Perenchio told a person involved in the deal at one point.
Univision said Tuesday that it had accepted the offer of $36.25 a share from the other consortium, which was led by private equity firms Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners, Texas Pacific Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners along with Saban, who had made millions on the Mighty Morphin Power Ranger cartoons.
Univision valued the deal at $13.7 billion, which includes the assumption of the company's $1.4 billion in debt.
When the auction was announced in February, the word went out that Perenchio was hoping for $40 a share, which is why many expected him to play his two bidders against one another at least a little longer.
"What was surprising was that there was no real second round to the auction," said Merrill Lynch & Co. media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, one of several analysts who were struck by the swiftness of the decision.
In the end, Televisa's bid had too much going against it, sources involved in the auction said. Had it prevailed, Televisa was certain to face a tough regulatory fight because of rules that limit foreign ownership of U.S. broadcasting companies. Moreover, after four of Televisa's equity partners walked away from the deal last week, Univision was not certain Televisa would be able to raise its offer.
"It wasn't so much a bird in the hand versus two in the bush," said one person who was in the room Monday night, summing up Perenchio's thinking. "It was a bird in the hand versus what's \o7in \f7that bush?"
