SATELLITE television company BSkyB is thought unlikely to use this week's half-year results statement to say whether or not it will appeal against the Government's ruling that it must cut its stake in rival ITV.
Business and Enterprise Secretary John Hutton last week said BSkyB must cut its 17.9% holding to less than 7.5%. This would mean selling at least 404 million shares that have lost nearly half of their value since Sky chief executive James Murdoch,
now chairman, bought them in November 2006 in a raid that effectively scuppered a bid for ITV by cable company NTL, since renamed Virgin Media.
BSkyB has four weeks from the date of the announcement to launch an appeal and said it will give "careful consideration" to the ruling.
Paul Richards, media analyst with Numis Securities, said it was "extremely unlikely" BSkyB would comment on the situation if it was still undecided about attempting to overturning the decision. However, if an appeal is a certainty, Wednesday would provide an ideal platform for launching that campaign.
Another analyst said BSkyB would rebuff all efforts to extract further information about the ITV situation.
"I doubt very much they will say anything, because they are in the middle of reviewing their options," he said. "They will simply say we are not going to comment on it, and if people keep asking, they will say 'no comment' again and again."
BSkyB has already confirmed it will book a loss of £343m on the shares. Most analysts agree that if BSkyB is eventually forced to sell, its main problem will be finding a buyer. Virgin Media has indicated it is no longer interested in acquiring ITV, and in any case, its heavy debt load would make it extremely difficult to finance such a deal.
Meanwhile, the global credit crunch could convince financial buyers that their scarce resources would be better invested in sectors with less immediate exposure to tougher economic conditions.
"The whole media sector is in a bit of limbo right now, because nobody has really seen a slowdown yet, but obviously people are worried about it, and markets are starting to discount that in media share prices," Richards said.
Bryan Johnston at stockbrokers Bell Lawrie said a lack of potential buyers for the whole of the stake BSkyB would be forced to offload made it more likely the firm would attempt to overturn the decision.
Most legal experts believe BSkyB would have a tough time with an appeal, which would likely take about a month to complete. However, delaying the inevitable would give BSkyB more time to sort through other options.
"If they don't appeal, what are they going to do with that stake in ITV?" Johnston said.
Unlike others, Johnston expects BSkyB to make some sort of statement about the situation on Wednesday. Although the company may not have made a decision by then, Johnston said BSkyB's management team was too astute to be caught out by the intense interest in the issue.
He said: "If they don't volunteer information about it, they will certainly be asked about it afterwards, and they would have to have a prepared statement for that, so why not simply go ahead and make that statement?"
The full article contains 552 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
