Diller's IAC to split into five companies
NEW YORK (AFP) — IAC, the wide-ranging e-commerce group headed by mogul Barry Diller, announced plans Monday to split into five separate publicly traded entities to create a "focused story" for investors.
The move would leave a core group called IAC (formerly InterActiveCorp) as a media-advertising group including the search engine Ask.com, and spin off other operations including a Web retail arm, the Internet finance firm LendingTree and online ticket agency Ticketmaster.
"We've been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years," Diller said in a statement.
"And while we've created a lot of value, I've always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors."
Diller said each of the units would cover "a distinct business sector," and that the reorganization would help "attract and retain superior talent and make acquisitions, and a focused story investors can clearly understand and buy into."
The remaining IAC group will include Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, IAC Advertising Solutions, Evite, Excite, iWon, Match.com and other major websites.
The retail arm to be spun off would include HSN (Home Shopping Network), among others.
Ticketmaster would be set up as a separate group with its US and foreign operations including in Britain, Germany, Canada, China, Brazil, Australia, Sweden and Turkey.
LendingTree, the online finance arm, will also include real-estate websites RealEstate.com, Home Loan Center and iNest.
Also to be spun off would be the vacation and resort operations under Interval International, which includes CondoDirect, Resort Quest Hawaii and VacationSource.com.
Diller's group in the past few years had acquired Ask.com, formerly known as AskJeeves, and spun off the online travel group Expedia.com.
Diller said IAC shareholders would get shares in each of the units in a tax-free transaction. He will remain head of IAC while the other four units would get their own chief executives.
IAC would retain "substantially all" of the company's cash while the new companies will be "appropriately capitalized," he added.
Diller acknowledged that LendingTree is "obviously under pressure from the macro real estate and mortgage environment," but is "nevertheless a valuable asset with a great brand."
HSN would be able to thrive as a "pure-play retailer," he added.
Diller at one point held a key stake in media-entertainment giant Vivendi Universal, terms for which had to be negotiated in 2004 before the sale of the company to General Electric, which merged it with its television division to create NBC Universal.
