FROM HERE TO INFINITY; INVESTORS FLOCK TO BUY BROADCAST STOCK.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Shares of Infinity Broadcasting Corp., the most profitable division of CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. Corp., went on sale on Wall Street Thursday and plenty of buyers turned up. Infinity rose 12.5 percent on its first day of trading, closing at $23.0625 on the New York Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) World's largest marketplace for securities. The exchange began as an informal meeting of 24 men in 1792 on what is now Wall Street in New York City. . CBS spun off a 17 percent stake in the division Wednesday at a price of $20.50, raising $2.87 billion in an initial public offering of stock. The spinoff gives investors a chance to buy into CBS' strongest business without exposure to the company's money-losing broadcast network. Analysts anticipated strong demand for the new stock given the profitability of CBS' 160 radio stations and the popularity of CBS' no-nonsense president, Mel Karmazin Melvin Alan "Mel" Karmazin, a native New Yorker, (born August 24, 1943)[1] is an executive who has held several top jobs in the broadcasting industry and is currently CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio. , on Wall Street. The new Infinity Broadcasting revives the name of the company Karmazin sold to CBS for $3.9 billion two years ago. CBS sold 140 million shares, about 5 million more shares than the company said last month it would offer. The $20.50 offering price was the midpoint mid·point n. 1. Mathematics The point of a line segment or curvilinear arc that divides it into two parts of the same length. 2. A position midway between two extremes. of the expected $19-$22 range. The Infinity sale ranks behind only Conoco Inc.'s $4.5 billion initial public stock offering in October and the $3 billion spinoff of Lucent Technologies Inc. from AT&T Corp. in 1996 as the biggest initial offerings. It eclipses News Corp.'s $2.8 billion spinoff of a stake in Fox Entertainment Group last month as the richest media IPO (Initial Public Offering) The first time a company offers shares of stock to the public. While not a computer term per se, many founders, employees and insiders of computer companies have found this acronym more exciting than any tech term they ever heard. . CBS will own the remaining 83 percent of Infinity and plans to use proceeds from the offering partly to pay off debt. CAPTION(S): 2 Photos PHOTO (1--Color) New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, left, and Mel Karmazin, Infinity Broadcasting Corp. president, signal thumbs-up Thursday. (2--Color) John Dolan, center, conducts trading during Infinity's initial public offering. Stock in the CBS unit rose 12.5 percent in its first day. Richard Drew/Associated Press |
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