In December, Disney announced plans to introduce a free version of the Disney Channel in Russia, a market prepped for “vast growth…despite the near-term economic turmoil.” But over the weekend Forbes reported that Russia’s anti-monopoly service had nixed the idea, which perhaps explains why News Corporation and other media outlets have lately been trying to sell their Russian holdings.
“They’ve been trying for more than a year to sell assets in Eastern Europe and Russia,” Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce told Forbes. “They didn’t like the way the operating or regulatory environment was starting to evolve and they were trying to sell to current managers and private equity. But the market wasn’t letting it happen.”