General Electric has paid Vivendi $2 billion for nearly 8 percent of the 20 percent share of NBC Universal the French media conglomerate owns, a component to the sale of NBCU to Comcast, which is expected to close by the end of the year.
Vivendi says it will sell the remaining 12.34 percent it owns in NBCU for $3.8 billion after the Comcast purchase is complete.
Comcast has run into a large amount of public, Congressional and regulatory opposition to its purchase of NBCU from GE, which it agreed to last December. But, the company still believes the deal will be approved by the end of the year and is "moving as quickly as we possibly can to try to close that transaction... from an organizational sense and an integration sense," said CFO Michael Angelakis, during a webcast from Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. "We are more excited than we were back last December."
Comcast, in fact, has announced that it would name COO Steve Burke as the new head of NBCU once the merger is complete, in part to take better advantage of distribution channels like OTT delivery.
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