Here's one way of looking at the
breakup of IAC/InteractiveCorp, which became official on Thursday: It separated a big bundle of business-strategy puzzles into five smaller ones.
As Chris Nolter, writing in TheDeal.com (subscription required), shows, one of the most interesting conundrums is the case of
newly spun-off Ticketmaster. The tickets company has been making deals to expand internationally and move into the secondary market for tickets, but the ticketing industry is a fast-moving one these days, as evidenced by the fact that major Ticketmaster client LiveNation moved last year to bring its ticketing in-house.
Other new units have their own issues to address. Charlotte, N.C.-based Tree.com,
which owns Lendingtree.com and other businesses tied to real estate and
lending, has been hurt by the housing downturn. The company's revenue
fell from $476 million in 2006 to $346 million in 2007.
And will HSN Inc.-- the St. Petersburg, Fla., television shopping
channel, which produced about $2.9 billion in 2007 revenue -- get together with Liberty Media Corp.'s
QVC television shopping outfit? Relations between IAC and its shareholder Liberty may
still be frayed following recent litigation between the two companies.
There will be multiple storylines to follow. As IAC financial chief Tom McInerney points out in an interview on Paid Content -- where he calls the old structure a "Rubik's cube" -- that's the reason for the breakup. - Kenneth Klee
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