John Malone

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Malone is best known as a deal-maker who is constantly accumulating and unwinding stakes in various media and telecom companies. The most recent dissolution: his relationship with Barry Diller. In a complicated and ugly court case, Malone sought to boot Diller out of his IAC/InterActiveCorp, but lost. Now he’s thinking about swapping his large stake in Time Warner for the company’s AOL division.

BIG NEW FRIEND: Oprah, now a partner, via Malone’s Discovery Communications, in OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.

LABEL-DEFYING MOVE: Wall Street was convinced that Malone, 67, would take control of DirecTV, the country’s biggest satellite-TV service, and flip it for another asset. But so far Malone appears to be interested in operating the service in conjunction with Liberty’s cable programming.

ON THE RECORD: Malone, quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that later became a key point of contention in the Liberty Media/IAC trial: “There was a time when there was, I think, a 20 percent Barry premium” on Wall Street. “Today you could argue there is a Barry discount.”