VICE Media, which shot to notoriety here last year following an exposé on bribery involving Chinese businessmen and an attempted takedown of Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is restarting its sale process after earlier interested bidders balked at the initial price tag, according to a CNBC report yesterday.
CNBC said that the digital media company, which was valued at US$5.7 billion in 2017, is now likely to fetch a price of below US$1 billion, according to the people it spoke to. Initially, VICE was looking for a valuation between US$1 billion and US$1.5 billion, one of the persons said, according to the report.
CNBC said that a VICE Media spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to comment.
VICE last year hired advisers to facilitate a sale of some or all of its business, CNBC had previously reported. Some of its most attractive assets are likely to be its content studio and creative advertising agency, Virtue, CNBC said, but the company is attempting to sell itself as a whole rather than in segments.
One of VICE’s lenders, Fortress Investment Group, is a key force in the sale process, the sources said, and has agreed to wait on loan repayment, CNBC said. Fortress was reportedly part of a consortium of lenders in 2019 that provided US$250 million in debt to VICE.
The report said that VICE has lowered its expectations in hopes of getting a deal done and securing a payout sooner rather than later, CNBC reported its source as saying.
CNBC said that digital media companies have fallen from great heights in recent years as growth has stalled due to declining audience numbers and advertising.
CNBC said that VICE reached its peak valuation in 2017 with a US$450 million investment from private equity firm TPG, valuing the company at the time at nearly US$6 billion.
VICE ended 2022 with a slight gain in revenue, but the business deteriorated among macroeconomic headwinds, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Last year, VICE conducted an interview with Jagdeo in which it asked him whether he had taken bribes based on allegations to this effect by the Vice President’s then tenant Su Zhirong. Jagdeo vehemently denied the allegations and he later aired segments of the interview conducted by VICE News reporter Isobel Yeung. The excerpts from the interview created an uproar here and while Su himself denied the allegations he disappeared from Guyana.
When VICE eventually aired the programme based on its interview with Chinese businessmen and Jagdeo, Su could he heard alleging that bribes were taken and in an undercover sequence at the Vice President’s home Su was filmed in conversation with Jagdeo and a Mr Chan who VICE hired to pose as a businessman offering bribes. At the point where the bribe was to be offered Jagdeo protested.
Explaining later to the media the excerpt of him telling Chan “No, no, no. I am not getting involved in business. You will get the support. Su is my friend, he gets all the support. He deals with all the agreements. I don’t. I don’t,” he said that he was merely emphasising that he was in no way connected to the agreement that the man had with Su. “They were repeatedly trying to get me to say whether I would be part of the hotel and casino deal and I kept saying, no. Throughout it all they could not get me to say I want to be part of this arrangement. Now I know that he was saying that he wanted to offer me a bribe and Su said no he will not…,” he said.
After viewing the VICE News programme in June last year, Jagdeo said that he will sue Su for claims that he made alleging that he (Jagdeo) took bribes to facilitate deals by Chinese investors.
