• by Wayne Friedman , November 10, 2015

Film and television studio Lionsgate has some new cable equity partners -- Liberty Global and Discovery Communications.

Liberty Global and Discovery Communications will each acquire a 3.4% stake in the company -- and each will pay about $195 million for their respective stakes.

Liberty and Discovery will acquire their Lionsgate stakes from MHR Fund Management LLC, which is controlled by Lionsgate Chairman Mark Rachesky.

Liberty Media’s John Malone, who joined the Lionsgate board earlier this year, owns 28.7% of Discovery and 25% of Liberty Global.

Jon Feltheimer, chief executive officer, and Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, stated that the "agreement creates tremendous strategic opportunities to grow our content initiatives around the world and positions us to generate significant incremental value for our shareholders."

Mike Fries, president/CEO of Liberty Global and David Zaslav, president/CEO of Discovery Communications, have been named to the company’s board of directors.

Liberty Global is an international cable company with operations in 14 countries. It owns varied cable interests in Virgin Media, Ziggo, Unitymedia, Telenet, UPC, VTR and Liberty.

Discovery Communications cable networks operate in more than 220 countries.