GE Capital's Raymond Shu on how the media industry is ready for new crossownership mergers

4/12/2010 The Radio Business Report/Television Business Report shared the transcript and audio from their annual financial roundtable. The quote below is from Raymond Shu of GE Capital, which has "about eight billion dollars of assets in the MCE [Media, Communications, and Entertainment] space and historically [is] one of the larger media lenders in the industry."

"I think the one topic that all of us on the phone are always keenly following is the FCC crossownership issue and how perhaps that gets redefined. I think if the ownership rules loosens up, then I think you could expect to see an increase in M & A [merger and acquisition] activity, both within each  individual sectors, but perhaps also across different sectors where a newspaper company may merge with a broadcaster and so forth. The operating synergies are pretty obvious to everyone. I think if the ownership and the crossownership rules are loosened I think you will see definitely an uptick in M & A activity."

Media owners sometimes argue that the FCC can go ahead and revoke ownership rules because today's economic climate means that consolidation and mergers are a matter of history. If that were true, they wouldn't be working so hard to change the rules.