The summer camp for billionaires, which just kicked off in Sun Valley, has yielded some blockbuster deals over the years
Among those in attendance at this year’s gathering are Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in June 0f 2016.
The event features several days of talks about business and the economy.
But the real action comes in the meetings, power lunches, and general chit-chat the moguls engage in between the formal sessions, which often provide the foundation to mega deals. These deals usually don’t materialize until weeks or months later, which is why an army of reporters armed with telephoto lenses stalk the area, diligently snapping pics of what could be the next blockbuster deal.
Often the photos prove nothing more than the fact that Executive A had lunch with Executive B. But with so many high-powered execs in attendance (not to mention the fact the event is hosted by an investment bank eager to broker big corporate marriages that pay big fees), it’s inevitable that some of these encounters lead to deals.
This year's event has plenty of interesting storylines. Jack Dorsey is at the event, as speculation swirls that this might finally be the year Twitter, the company he leads as CEO, finds a buyer. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is also there along with Amazon head Jeff Bezos, who is reportedly interested in acquiring the messaging service.
Here's a recap of some of the biggest deals that have been hatched at the conference over the years.
Yahoo/Verizon
Verizon closed a deal to buy Yahoo for $4.5 billion earlier this summer, and morphed into Oath, a combination of Verizon partner AOL and Yahoo that encompasses 50 media and technology brands.
During 2014's event, reporters spotted then Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong having a "deep conversation" in the resort's bar. They almost shut down the place that night their discussion was so intense, and speculation began to swirl that a deal was being hammered out.
It's hard to say whether that conversation actually revolved around a future deal.
AOL/Verizon
The seeds to one of 2015’s most high-profile acquisitions were planted in July 2014 in Sun Valley.
It was there that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam had lunch together and started talking about “the way the world was going.”
Those discussions progressed over the fall, culminating with the May announcement that AOL was selling to Verizon for $4.4 billion. The combination could help telecommunications giant Verizon become a bigger player in mobile and video advertising.
As for AOL, hopefully this deal will turn out better than the last big combination it sketched out at Sun Valley: the ill-fated 1999 merger with Time Warner.
Comcast/NBC Universal
Cable company Comcast morphed into a media goliath in 2011 when it acquired a majority stake in entertainment company NBC Universal.
The deal involved months of negotiations but a key moment occurred during a secret meeting at a condo near the ninth hole of a Sun Valley golf course in 2009. According to a report in the New York Times, Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE (which owned NBC at the time), met with Comcast COO Steve Burke and Comcast’s 89-year-old founder Ralph Roberts.
Immelt had already met with Roberts' son Brian, who was the CEO of Comcast, but he wanted to hear from the elder Roberts as well. The secret rendezvous required that Immelt dodge not only the gaggle of reporters at the event, but even his own colleague, NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, who was also at the conference but was not privy to the deal talks.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
Contributer : Tech Insider http://ift.tt/2tjBwV4
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