Liberty Abandons Plan to Buy Rest of Sirius

Liberty Media, the company controlled by John C. Malone, announced late Thursday that it had abandoned its plan to buy the shares of SiriusXM that it did not already own as part of a move to set up two tracking stocks to house the company’s assets.

Liberty Media, which owns 53 percent of Sirius XM Holdings, had announced in January an all-stock deal valued at more than $10 billion to purchase the rest of the shares of Sirius.

One tracking stock group, to be called the Liberty Broadband Group, will include the company’s interest in Charter Communications; its interest in Time Warner Cable Inc. and its subsidiary TruePosition; and other investments. The second tracking stock, the Liberty Media Group, will encompass its other holding, including the Sirius XM stake as well as stakes in various media and entertainment businesses, including the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Live Nation Entertainment and Barnes & Noble.

In a statement, Mr. Malone said the move to set up the tracking stocks would help support its investment in Charter Communications.

“We remain very excited about our investments in the cable sector and Charter Communications,” Mr. Malone said. “We believe the creation of the Liberty Broadband tracking stock,” he added, “will provide us greater flexibility to, among other things, support Charter in its expansion efforts.”

Tracking stocks were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among media companies, to allow them to set up entities to “track” the financial performance of specific business units. If the unit or division does well, the value of the tracking stock typically increases, even if the company as a whole does poorly.

Under the plan, Liberty Media shareholders will receive one share of the corresponding series of Liberty Media tracking stock and four shares of the corresponding series of Liberty Broadband tracking stock for each share of common stock they own. They will also be offered the chance to buy additional shares in the tracking stocks.

Greg Maffei, Liberty Media’s chief executive, said in a statement the company planned to create the tracking stocks by the third quarter.

Liberty Media shares were up about 3 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, while Sirius shares were down about 2 percent.