It looks as if McCaw Cellular Communications Inc may be in the home straight in its marathon pursuit of LIN Broadcasting Corp. LIN came around over the weekend after McCaw said that it would improve its offer further if LIN would recommend the revised offer (CI No 1,316). THe new offer is $154.11 per share for 21.9m LIN shares, which with the 5.1m it holds would give it just over 50%; the minority would continue to trade for five years and independent advisors would set a price for McCaw to buy them – in the interim, McCaw will set a limit of 75% on the stake it will build by buying in the market; it will also hand its almost 5% stake in a Los Angeles franchise over to LIN. The overall offer values LIN at almost $7,000m and would give McCaw – 22%-owned by British Telecommunications Plc – an interest in 119 markets including five of the 10 biggest US cities. LIN has already agreed a friendly partial takeover by BellSouth Corp, which may well respond with better terms. It was reserving its position yesterday.
