Apax Partners, the venture capital firm that counts Greg Dyke as an adviser, yesterday emerged as a frontrunner to acquire BBC Broadcast, the corporation's transmission and branding business put up for auction last December.
The BBC confirmed the company's inclusion in a final short list of four interested in acquiring the division, which transmits all the BBC's television channels and could fetch up to £150m.
Following what the BBC described as an "extensive evaluation process" of 18 preliminary bids, Apax was selected to go ahead with a bid alongside French electronics group Thomson-Technicolor, Australian private equity firm Macquarie Group and Exponent Private Equity, a UK buy-out firm co-founded by former 3i director Tom Sweet-Escott.
The BBC's chief operating officer, John Smith, whose review of commercial operations last year led to the auction, said all the short-listed firms showed an impressive grasp of what the BBC expected from the sale.
"[They] have not only demonstrated an appreciation of the value of BBC Broadcast but also impressed us with their future growth plans and how they will work in partnership with the BBC in the coming years," Mr Smith said.
A BBC spokeswoman said it expected to announce the winning bid in the first two weeks of July, although the deal is not expected to be completed until the end of the summer, following approval from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The sale, which involves the transfer of about 1,100 staff, is likely to result in intense talks with unions. It comes at a time when both sides remain at loggerheads over continuing industrial action, sparked by plans by the director general, Mark Thompson, to cut more than 4,000 jobs. Unions remain opposed to the deal and argue the division should be retained as an internal asset.
Peter Phillips, the BBC's director of business development, said the corporation was in "regular dialogue with the unions and [has] been consulting with them since the sale commenced at the beginning of the year".
The corporation is thought to be concentrating on selling BBC Broadcast before tackling the trickier proposition of disposing of BBC Resources, its studio and post-production arm which was also deemed "non-core" in an internal review last year.
