Univision Communications

About Univision Communications

The story of Univision begins in 1962 when Rene Anselmo, Emilio Nicolas Sr., and Mexican media magnate Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta founded Spanish International Communications Corporation. Their goal was to create a television network for the Spanish-speaking audience in the United States, an underserved market at the time. They started by acquiring local stations, like KWEX-TV in San Antonio, and built a network primarily reliant on programming from Azcárraga's Mexican company, Telesistema Mexicano, which would later become Televisa. A pivotal moment came in 1987 when, due to FCC regulations on foreign ownership, the station group was sold to Hallmark Cards for about $300 million and rebranded as Univision. This marked a new chapter, but the company's trajectory would shift again in 1992 when it was sold for $550 million to a group that included investor A. Jerrold Perenchio, who secured majority control, alongside partners from Televisa and Venezuela's Venevision. Under this new ownership, Univision went public in 1996, trading on the NYSE under the symbol UVN. The company's ownership structure continued to evolve. In 2007, Univision was taken private in a massive $13.7 billion leveraged buyout by a consortium of private equity firms led by Haim Saban. More than a decade later, in 2020, a majority stake was acquired by investment firms ForgeLight and Searchlight Capital. This set the stage for the most significant transaction in its history: a 2022 merger with Televisa's content assets. Valued at $4.8 billion, the deal created TelevisaUnivision, a Spanish-language media giant with a vast content library and reach in both the U.S. and Mexico.