New Delhi, February 15: Essel Group Chairman Subhash Chandra is in the United States to discuss a deal with potential investors to sell a part of their stake in Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL). In a bid to repay debt, promoters of Essel Group are holding talks with US media giant Comcast and Japanese multinational conglomerate Sony Corporation to sell over 50 per cent of their stakes in ZEEL, reports CNBC TV18.

Both Comcast and Sony have proposed to buy shares in the range of Rs 540-560 per share, which is higher by almost 24.13 percent from Thursday's closing price, the report said. Shares of ZEEL jumped 6.19 percent to close at Rs 433.30 apiece on the BSE. Promoters of Essel Group are likely to seal the deal by the end of this week, the report added.

On January 25, shares of ZEE group companies had come under massive selling pressure, plummeting up to 33 per cent, and suffered a combined erosion of Rs 13,352 crore in market valuation. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL), in a regulatory filing, said Nityank lnfrapower and Multiventures is an “independent company and does not belong to Essel Group”. Its DTH arm Dish TV has also denied any transaction with Nityank in its scheme of merger of Videocon D2H with the company.

Earlier, Chandra apologised to lenders and said his company is in a financial mess and blamed the same for the aggressive bets on infrastructure, which has gone out of control since the IL&FS crisis and also the acquisition of Videocon’s D2H business. (With PTI inputs)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 15, 2019 05:08 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).