John Malone’s Douglas County-based Liberty Media has offered to pay about $1 billion in cash for Barnes & Noble, the bookstore operator announced late Thursday.
If the deal goes through, Barnes & Noble will become the second highly recognizable but struggling brick-and-mortar brand of late to wind up in the hands of a Colorado company.
Douglas County-based Dish Network acquired video-rental chain Blockbuster in April.
Liberty proposed to pay $17 a share in cash, a 20.5 percent premium over Barnes & Noble’s closing price of $14.11 Thursday. The New York-based company’s shares surged past $17 in after-hours trading.
The deal is “contingent on the participation of founding chairman Leonard Riggio, both in terms of his continuing equity ownership and his continuing role in management,” Barnes & Noble said. The company said a purchase agreement has not been signed and that the offer has not been reviewed by its board. In a news release Thursday night, Liberty confirmed the offer and its terms.
Barnes & Noble operates 705 bookstores in 50 states and employs about 40,000 people.
Like Blockbuster, the bookseller has struggled amid the rise of Internet commerce and digital content.
Online retailer , to some extent, is doing to Barnes & Noble what Netflix did to Blockbuster. Dish, chaired by Malone’s crosstown rival Charlie Ergen, acquired Blockbuster out of bankruptcy for $320 million.
Barnes & Noble hired Lazard Ltd. last year to explore a sale. The company has launched the Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon’s popular Kindle for digital sales.
Liberty, founded and chaired bycable-TV pioneer Malone, controls or holds stakes in a wide range of businesses, including Sirius XM Radio,, and the QVC home-shopping and Starz cable networks.
The company announced plans last year to turn its Liberty Interactive tracking stock into an asset-backed stock. The move, targeted for June, would help Liberty Interactive make acquisitions with stock, experts have said.
As part of the change, the Liberty Capital and Liberty Starz tracking-stock groups would separate from Liberty Interactive.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209, avuong@denverpost.com or
