Nascar Makes Roughly $1.9 Billion Bid for International Speedway

(Bloomberg) -- NASCAR is bidding roughly $1.9 billion for International Speedway Corp., a potential merger that would more tightly combine two companies already controlled by the France family.

• The board of International Speedway, which runs the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, has received a nonbinding offer for $42 a share. That’s about 7.5 percent above its closing price on Friday.

Key Insights

• The idea is to combine the companies as a privately held group, with the France family as the primary owners. Jim France currently serves as chairman of International Speedway and chief executive officer of NASCAR.
• NASCAR has been looking for minority investors, and a merger might help resolve those efforts. It also has been coping with falling ratings and the loss off some big sponsors, such as Lowe’s Cos. France cited the “highly competitive sports and entertainment landscape” in calling to unify the two businesses.
• A special committee of independent directors from International Speedway will now mull the proposal.

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Read the release here.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nick Turner in Los Angeles at nturner7@bloomberg.net;Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Timothy Annett

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