My first reaction was sticker-shock Vice spent that much money on Refinery29 given both companies are struggling with profitability.
Then, as I read it's mostly an all-stock deal and zoomed out to the investors it added a lot more perspective.
Vice and Refinery29 are both more like media pawns than media pillars. Vice's major equity owners include Disney, TPG (a private equity company from Texas that owns McAfee), and A&E (owned by Disney) - so Disney and TPG. Refinery29's major equity owners include WarnerMedia (owned by AT&T), the Discovery Channel, and a random private equity company.
At a high level, this acquisition is like a few financier and mega-corporation kids in the same sandbox playing a game of toy soldiers.
This doesn't really mean anything about Vice's or Refinery29's editorials or whatever, it's just a total mindfuck to look at these "behind the scenes" ownership structures and think about how that relates/juxtaposes with the companies that are owned.
One way to make sense of this is that WarnerMedia and Disney had some assets that needed a bit of rehabilitation, and Nancy Dubuc is taking a varied set of assets & backers and trying to build something out of it.
Then, as I read it's mostly an all-stock deal and zoomed out to the investors it added a lot more perspective.
Vice and Refinery29 are both more like media pawns than media pillars. Vice's major equity owners include Disney, TPG (a private equity company from Texas that owns McAfee), and A&E (owned by Disney) - so Disney and TPG. Refinery29's major equity owners include WarnerMedia (owned by AT&T), the Discovery Channel, and a random private equity company.
At a high level, this acquisition is like a few financier and mega-corporation kids in the same sandbox playing a game of toy soldiers.
This doesn't really mean anything about Vice's or Refinery29's editorials or whatever, it's just a total mindfuck to look at these "behind the scenes" ownership structures and think about how that relates/juxtaposes with the companies that are owned.