The USA Networks-Expedia deal will close in the first or second quarter, a USA official said.

“It will close and it will close on the terms already in the deal,” said Jon Miller, president and chief executive officer of USA Information & Services, the unit that includes TicketMaster, Hotel Reservations Network and other businesses.

Miller spoke here Jan. 8 at the Salomon Smith Barney 12th Annual Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference.

The deal, in which USA would take a majority stake in Microsoft-controlled Expedia, hit a snag in mid-December when USA agreed to sell its entertainment assets to Vivendi Universal for $10.3 billion.

At the time, Expedia took an approval vote off the agenda of its Dec. 17 shareholder meeting and said it would submit new documentation in anticipation of a shareholder special meeting in 2002.

Miller, in addressing the investor conference, said the USA-Expedia deal is going through a routine “mechanical process” and that there was no reason to believe that it will not close by the end of the first quarter or early in the second quarter.

www.expedia.com

——-