Malone hitches up to broadband bandwagon

Sun Valley’s reputation as a hotbed of dealmaking is exaggerated but with dealmaking central to its legend, nobody is more in focus this week than Liberty Media’s John Malone.

His companies have been involved in some of this year’s biggest deals, buying Virgin Media in the UK for $23.3bn, taking a stake in Dutch cable operator Ziggo, tussling with Vodafone over Kabel Deutschland and spending $2.6 billion for 27 percent of Charter Communications, the fourth-largest US cable operator. He is looking for the next target already. Consolidation in the fragmented US pay-TV market looks inevitable, and for it to be led by the man who built America’s largest cable company before selling TCI to AT&T in 1999 might seem poetic.