Judge Rules in Favor of IAC's Diller

SAN FRANCISCO - A judge on Friday ruled against Liberty Media's(LINTA Quote) efforts to block IAC/InterActive Corp.'s(IACI Quote) chief executive from spinning the Internet conglomerate into five separate companies.

Liberty Media's CEO John Malone had tried to remove Barry Diller as head of IAC, along with six of the company's directors, among them Diller's wife, fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg. Malone also contested Diller's plan to split IAC into five parts, which he claimed would dilute Liberty Media's voting power in IAC.

Liberty Media currently owns 30% of IAC's shares and about 62% of its voting control through a second class of super-voting shares. Diller, however, controls the voting rights of Liberty's IAC shares through a proxy agreement and proposes to give each spin-off a single-tier voting structure, whereby each share of common stock would have equal voting power. ...