Getting your player ready...
NEW YORK — Barry Diller is feeling very lucky right now. The consummate dealmaker split his Internet conglomerate, IAC/InterActiveCorp, into five publicly traded companies in late August — and not a moment too soon, he said. IAC borrowed $2 billion to make it happen.
“Some of our advisers said to us, ‘Wait a few weeks,’ and we said, ‘We’re not waiting an hour,’ ” he said while glacing at television monitors where Monday’s 778-point drop in the Dow was unfolding. “And that was wise, because if we had tried to finance the spin transactions now, we’d be frozen.”
He vows that the “opportunism” that previously drove IAC to gobble up varied Web companies would never again be 90 percent of what IAC does. The Associated Press; AP file photo
