Time Warner Inc, which has been flirting with Cablevision Industries Inc for some months, has now decided to buy the company, adding about 1.3m subscribers to its cable television base and taking it to a total of 11.5m subscribers. Time Warner now intends to establish a separate self-financing enterprise to house its cable and telecommunications properties, and sell assets whatever are deemed to be non-core assets to cut its vast debt burden of $13,000m. It will pay 2.5m shares of Time Warner common, 3.25m shares each of two new series of convertibles, liquidation value $100 per share, together worth an indicated $745m, and assume $2,000m of debt. The acquisition wsa chosen to further its strategy of concentrating its cable interests in large subscriber clusters. It declined to identify which businesses are on the block but says that good smaller businesses in its five core areas of operation may well be among those it sells.
