Finance
Liberty Global halves ITV stake in portfolio shift
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on October 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on October 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Liberty Global halves its ITV stake, causing a 12% drop in shares. Redwheel now holds the largest stake as ITV faces market challenges.
(Reuters) -ITV shares slid by more than 12% on Wednesday after Liberty Global, the British broadcaster's largest shareholder, halved its stake to about 5%.
Liberty Global Ventures sold 193.4 million ITV shares to institutional investors in a block trade, a bookrunner said, raising about 135 million pounds ($181 million).
Liberty Global was "disposing of certain assets while prioritizing our scale-based investments", a spokesperson said, as flagged in its first-quarter earnings release.
"As part of that process, we are divesting part of our stake in ITV," the spokesperson said.
ITV's shares were down 8.5% in mid-morning trades after the sale. Specialist investment firm Redwheel now becomes the largest ITV shareholder with a 6% stake, LSEG data shows.
Liberty Global's stake sale, at an undisclosed price through an accelerated bookbuild process, comes at a crucial time for the broadcaster as it tackles challenges stemming from streaming rivals and a weak advertising market.
In July, ITV posted a 7% decline in its total advertising revenue for the first half of the year, although it was less than analysts' consensus of an 8% fall.
Liberty Global has agreed to a 60-day lock-up period on further ITV share sales. BNP Paribas and Deutsche Numis were joint global coordinators and bookrunners on the placing.
($1 = 0.7451 pounds)
(Reporting by Yamini Kalia in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Subhranshu Sahu and Alexander Smith)
A portfolio is a collection of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments held by an individual or institution.
Equity represents ownership in a company, typically in the form of shares, and indicates the value of the ownership stake.
The London Stock Exchange is one of the largest stock exchanges in the world, where shares of publicly traded companies are bought and sold.
Financial markets are platforms where buyers and sellers engage in the trade of assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, and derivatives.
An investment strategy is a plan designed to guide an investor's decisions on how to allocate their assets to achieve specific financial goals.
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