It’s looking more and more likely that the $85B
AT&T-Time Warner deal will happen.
Why?
First, President Trump seems
to be less concerned about the deal than Candidate Trump did 6-months ago. Second, the FCC, on Monday, approved Time
Warner’s $70M preemptive sale of its Atlanta TV station to Meredith. The broadcast station was the only one of
Time Warner’s stations regulated by the FCC.
Had the FCC decided the review the merger, the requirement to transfer station
licenses may have been an issue. Third,
the new head of the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, Maken Delrahim, does not see
the merger “as a major antitrust problem” as it does not reduce the number of
direct competitors in the marketplace.
This is in spite of the merger’s size and potential foreclosure
issues.
As the probability of this deal
happening increases, could the announcement of others be far behind?
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