[Satellite News – 6-10-08] While GlobeCast has been present in the Asia-Pacific market for about 10 years, a recently announced a deal to acquire Hong Kong-based broadcast services company Pacific Century Matrix (HK) Limited (PCM) will help give GlobeCast an even stronger presence, said David Justin, CEO of GlobeCast Asia.
    “PCM will add about a third to the activity we have in Asia,” said Justin. “That will give you some kind of idea of the importance of the deal. We have been enjoying nice internal growth, but we thought the time was right to boost that even more and external growth gives you more speed to growth.”
    When the transaction is complete, PCM will be renamed GlobeCast Hong Kong — GlobeCast’s fifth office in Asia and 18th office worldwide. The acquisition will give PCM clients access to the worldwide reach of GlobeCast, a full subsidiary of France Telecom.
    “We have our headquarters in Singapore and we have offices in New Delhi, Beijing and Seoul,” Justin said. “We were missing Hong Kong on the map, and it is definitely a large media hub for international broadcasters, a bit like Singapore. Quite a few international channels have regional headquarters in either Singapore or Hong Kong. So adding PCM to the GlobeCast group basically is a very good fit because they have full operational, sales and technical presence in Hong Kong. Furthermore, PCM is a successful company. They have a strong business of existing customers, which we will be looking to build upon. They have a technical facility with antennas, monitoring and controlling, a bit of playout, so that is a good complement of what we have in Singapore.”
    GlobeCast believes this deal will make an attractive proposition for broadcasters looking to target some potentially lucrative pay-TV markets in the region. “There are some strong local broadcasters located in Hong Kong, so having a presence in Hong Kong will help develop business with local broadcasters,” he said. “It will greatly enhance our capacity to provide international broadcasters from Europe or the Americas solutions to launch their channels into Asia with services on AsiaSat 3S and MeaSat 3, which complement the Telstar 10 platform we have in Singapore. Hong Kong is one of the two media hubs. From Hong Kong, you can deliver and uplink an Asian suite of channels wanting to reach anywhere from Afghanistan to Korea.”
    Justin believes the integration process will be suitably quick. “We understand what they do,” he said. “Their business culture is very similar to ours, and their working language is English, so the integration should be quite fast. We will integrate Hong Kong in our international fiber network. There will not be many changes, but leveraging on our worldwide presence as well as PCM’s Hong Kong presence is one very positive change. PCM is a successful company, so we won’t change too many things.”