Grapevine: UK Bank Set to Buy EM.TV F1 Stake

A small British investment bank is ready to buy EM.TV's 50 percent stake in Formula One holding SLEC, challenging media giant Kirch's bid to rescue the debt-laden firm, industry sources said on Friday.

The sources said EM.TV's supervisory board chief Nickolaus Becker met a representative of the bank in Geneva on Thursday. EM.TV was inclined to accept the offer, which would see it sell the stake for about a third of the 3.5 billion marks ($1.69 billion) it paid Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone last year.

EM.TV declined to comment on the bid but repeated a statement issued earlier on Friday that it was sticking to the terms of an exclusivity agreement with Kirch.

Part of the stake would be given to Ecclestone in return for him cancelling a put option which, if exercised, would force EM.TV to buy a further 25 percent of SLEC, a deal which EM.TV would struggle to finance given its estimated debt of 1.12 billion euros ($1.06 billion).

Talks between EM.TV and Kirch on the details of a rescue deal announced in December have run into trouble. Kirch has offered to take a stake of up to 16.74 percent in EM.TV and buy almost half of its SLEC stake.