Time Warner: Should Media Conglom Spin Off HBO?

New Yorker: HBO has arguably never been more valuable. And that, oddly, makes this the perfect moment for Time Warner to let it go — to spin it off as a separate company in an IPO, according to James Surowiecki. “HBO would be far more valuable in the eyes of investors as a separate company. Big, diversified companies suffer from the so-called ‘conglomerate discount.’ The whole is worth less than the sum of its parts, because investors have trouble valuing corporate divisions and get worried about how the parts of a company interact.”