Shane Smith, the colorful co-founder and CEO of Vice Media, has gotten the multibillion-dollar market valuation he wanted for his upstart new-media conglomerate — but not from Time Warner, with whom he had reportedly been in negotiations. Those talks have been shelved, reports say, and now Vice has confirmed to the Financial Times that it is selling a 10-percent stake in the company to A&E Networks (a joint venture between Disney and Hearst Co.) for $250 million, which pegs the entire company’s market value at $2.5 billion.
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