Liberty Media to separate businesses; Implications for QVC, TruePosition and Atlanta Braves

John Malone's Liberty Media said yesterday that it will split off its Liberty Capital and Liberty Starz units from Liberty Interactive, which controls West Chester-based QVC. Liberty Capital includes Berwyn-based TruePosition, which primarily uses cell tower triangulation to identify mobile phone locations, and the Atlanta Braves, two companies that do not really fit together, as well as interests in other media properties. Liberty Interactive will become an "asset-backed" company rather than function as a tracking stock; tracking stocks (which are one of my pet financial peeves) do not actually own the underlying assets of the businesses they reflect.
I think this deal will open up new strategic possibilities for QVC, TruePosition and the Braves. Baseball people have always speculated that Liberty's ownership of the Braves, who were acquired as part of a deal with Time-Warner in 2007, would be short-term.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne as saying the transaction was "a vote of confidence in the stability of QVC."