Nagra restates OpenTV commitment

Nagravision has said it will continue to pursue its objectives through OpenTV, despite its inability to take full control of the middleware provider.

“The process is completely normal, as we have a controlling stake in the company the board of directors needed to form a committee to assess our offer, we’ve been discussing that with them, but ended up with the rejection,” Yves Pitton, senior vice president and head of corporate development, Nagravision SA told a press briefing at the company’s Cheseaux headquarters. “It doesn’t change the fact that we are collaborating with OpenTV as we were before. We have been working for the last six months on daily business activities as we did in the past and it will go on like this. The transaction is completely different.”

Pitton reiterated earlier statements that Nagravision was not prepared to sell its stake as has been demanded by The Discovery Group. “All the comments we have made are exactly what we have said and believe and will look to enforce changes, particularly in investment and development of the next generation of products. It’s not business as usual, we’ve been saying that things have to change, we’ve said that the best way was to acquire the shares and invest afterwards, but now it’s not possible for the moment.”

The Swiss technology company has held voting control of the San Francisco middleware and advertising solutions company since November 2006. In addition to 74.7% of voting shares it also holds a 26.7% equity stake.

Nagravision denied that it was hedging its bets by developing its own Nagra Guide EPG, Ivan Verbesselt, senior vice president marketing saying that the company was simply following market trends. “If you look at what is being deployed now in sizeable numbers it is either the vertically integrated solutions we are using in the Latin American market or the ones based on OpenTV, or other middleware partners, which is Nagra Guide”.