UK investment company Honeycomb Investments Ltd has purchased 8.8% of iHeartMedia according to SEC filings.
Honeycomb is funded by Michael Tabor, who is the financial backer of Global Radio led by his son Ashley Tabor-King. The $117,600,414 purchase of 9,631,329 shares makes Honeycomb one of the largest individual shareholders in iHeart. Global is the largest commercial radio operator in the United Kingdom with brands that include “Capital“, “Heart“, “LBC“, “Classic FM“, “Smooth Radio“, “Radio X” and many digital sub-brands of each.
A Honeycomb spokesperson told CampaignLive, ““Honeycomb Investments Ltd has acquired a circa 8.8% shareholding in iHeartMedia, as disclosed in our SEC filing on Friday. IHeart is the largest radio business in the US and Honeycomb is pleased to be able to have acquired this stake in a sector that it knows well. Honeycomb’s investors, the Tabor family, own Global, the largest radio and outdoor advertising company in the UK.”
The FCC gave approval to iHeartMedia’s petition to increase its foreign ownership from beyond the 25% limit to up to 100% last November.
INSTANT INSIGHT: This deal will lead to immediate speculation of a further deal between the two companies. What Global has built in the United Kingdom is quite similar to what iHeartMedia has become here combining radio, events and other advertising platforms. The purchase could be simply to get access to iHeartMedia’s technology whether on the radio operations side, digital advertising, or podcast network. Global has been very aggressive since its 2007 founding in consolidating local radio station brands under national brands and programming, something that iHeart has done on the programming side but not as much yet with stations brands.
