Family Making Offer for Cox Broadcast Units

The Cox family announced Monday a $1.3-billion tender offer for the 54.6% of Cox Communications it doesn’t already own.

Cox Enterprises would pay $75 a share, said Garner Anthony, its chairman and chief executive. Cox Enterprises is a group newspaper owner that is privately owned by Barbara Cox Anthony of Honolulu and Anne Cox Chambers of Atlanta.

The offer is effective Friday, Anthony said.

Cox Enterprises owns or controls 40.2% of the 28.2 million outstanding shares of Cox Communications. In addition, other members of the Cox family, officers and directors of both companies, business associates and related interests own 5.2%.

Cox Enterprises publishes 21 daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution and the Atlanta Journal.

Atlanta-based Cox Communications owns seven television stations and five AM and seven FM radio stations. It also operates cable-television systems serving 1.5 million customers.

In trading Monday, Cox Communications soared $14.25 to $76.50 a share on the New York Stock Exchange.

Cox Communications is the outgrowth of the purchase of a Dayton radio station by Gov. James M. Cox of Ohio in 1934. All of the Cox broadcast interests were put together in 1964 to form Cox Broadcasting, which then went public. Cox Broadcasting changed its name to Cox Communications in 1982.