Media giant Vivendi to discuss final bids

PARIS -- The board of French media group Vivendi Universal will meet today to weigh bids by General Electric Co.'s NBC unit and an investor group led by former Seagram Co. chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. for its hotly contested entertainment assets, officials familiar with the talks said.\nPublished reports Monday indicated that NBC has an edge in the long-running auction for the Vivendi Universal Entertainment assets -- an empire of film, television and theme park properties.\nAn investment banker close to Bronfman said his consortium has all but lost the bidding for VUE, which includes Universal movie and TV studios and the cable properties USA, Sci-Fi and Trio.\n"Let's say there will be no big surprise at the board meeting (today), and we won't mount a last-minute effort to turn the tables around," the banker told Dow Jones Newswires on condition of anonymity.\nThe Bronfman offer would involve more cash, but a tie-up with NBC would ally Vivendi with a corporate powerhouse of the stature of General Electric, company insiders have said.\nA person close to Vivendi confirmed to the Associated Press that the special board meeting was scheduled in Paris for today. Vivendi has been hoping to fetch $14 billion for the assets to pay down huge debts run up during a buyout spree in the late 1990s.\nAfter a board meeting in Paris last week, Vivendi said an eventual agreement with either suitor would leave the French company with a "substantial" stake in a U.S. media group. It also said it would explore a public offering for the entertainment assets.\nSome of the biggest titans of the U.S. media world expressed interest in Vivendi's entertainment arm during the months-long bidding process -- including cable TV mogul John Malone of Liberty Media Corp., CBS and MTV parent Viacom Inc.'s Sumner Redstone and Kirk Kerkorian, the top shareholder in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.\nThe Bronfman-led group includes Thomas H. Lee Partners, a private equity fund, and Cablevision Systems Corp., a cable TV company in New York that owns AMC, the Independent Film Channel and WE: Women's Entertainment channels.