Clear Channel Deal to Be Funded at $36 A Share

A deal has been reached to fund the purchase of Clear Channel Communications for $36 a share, according to people familiar with the settlement.

Eric Gay / AP Clear Channel's headquarters in San Antonio.

A trial was officially scheduled to begin on Tuesday in a dispute over the funding of the planned buyout of Clear Channel . However, it was delayed as a group of banks and buyout firms Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners began to work on a settlement.

The new deal should be announced this afternoon, according to the people familiar with these talks.

Under the terms of the revised agreement, it should take as much as three months to close the deal as it will require a new vote of Clear Channel shareholders and a new election for the stub-equity portion of the deal.

Last month, THL Partners and Bain Capital sued the banks, which include Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Deutsche Bank and Wachovia, in state courts in Texas and New York, alleging they improperly tried to forgo funding the deal. The buyout firms are pursuing a breach-of-contract claim in New York and improper interference with the merger by the banks in Texas.

The private-equity firms, along with Clear Channel, are seeking $26 billion in damages in the Texas case.

THL Partners and Bain Capital originally planned to acquire Clear Channel for $19.4 billion and take on $7.8 billion of its debt. The banks had agreed to provide more than $22 billion in financing.

Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions.