JOHN MALONE, the founder and chairman of Liberty Media, has announced a proposal to split the rest of the group into two in an attempt to boost the share price.

The plan came as the American media investor appointed Greg Maffei, a former Microsoft chief financial officer, as his chief executive to replace the outgoing Dob Bennett.

Under the break-up, Liberty will first create a tracking stock for QVC, the home shopping channel, and its other “interactive” assets, leaving behind his holding in News Corporation, parent company of The Times, in a venture named Liberty Capital.

Mr Malone said in a conference call that the QVC spin-off was part of a plan to “solve the easy problems first”. Liberty would then spin off the business — called Liberty Interactive — in “two to three years”, the chairman estimates.

The largest part of Liberty Capital is Mr Malone’s $8 billion (£4.6 billion) holding in News Corp, which includes an 18 per cent voting stake in the company — second only to the 29.5 per cent controlled by Rupert Murdoch, News Corp’s chairman and chief executive.

Mr Malone and Mr Murdoch have been in on-off discussions over the past year about the future of the holding, but yesterday Liberty signalled that the negotiations were now on the back burner.

The Liberty boss said that his goal was to “maximise the long-term value of the News Corp holdings on an after-tax basis”, but emphasised that proposals to change the US tax laws meant that he was “cautious about charging ahead” with a deal. “In our view News Corp stock is cheap . . . we’d be very reluctant to do something today,” he later added.

Last year Liberty suddenly doubled its voting stake in News Corp, prompting the media group behind the Fox film studio, as well as The Times, to introduce a poison pill to prevent Mr Malone buying more shares and challenging Mr Murdoch’s lifelong control of the business.

Mr Malone emphasised that he considered himself an ally, who was unconcerned about the poison pill. “We continue to be supportive of News Corp’s management and Rupert,” he said. Arguing that he “didn’t understand” why people believed that the News Corp share price was depressed by the poison pill, he said that he refused to join last month’s shareholder revolt in News Corp because to vote against the re-appointment of executive directors “ would have been brain-damaged”.

Under its mooted split, Liberty Interactive will also contain the company’s 21 per cent holding in IAC/InterActive, owner of Expedia, the travel website. Liberty Capital will also include small stakes in Time Warner, Motorola, Sprint and some early-stage investments.

LIBERTY LOG

March 28, 1991: Liberty Media Corp trades publicly for the first time.

March 9, 1999: TCI and AT&T merge, and Liberty Media Group becomes a tracking stock of AT&T.

Aug 10, 2001: Liberty Media Corp splits from AT&T.

March 15, 2004: Liberty demerges its international businesses into a separately traded company.

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