It feels like it was so long ago now that AT&T’s planned acquisition of Time Warner was just a rumor.
Especially when, around the same time, Apple was still denying plans to buy the company as well. Now, years later, AT&T is indeed trying to takeover Time Warner and make this one of the largest acquisitions to date. Especially when you consider just how much AT&T would be grabbing in this buy. However, the initial 2016 deal, which is valued at $85.4 billion, hasn’t had an easy road.
The United States Department of Justice has taken exception to the planned acquisition, saying that it could, in part, raise prices for pay-for-TV. Time Warner is the owner of a variety of TV networks, including HBO and CNN, and AT&T is no stranger to TV service in general as it already owns DirecTV and has an AT&T-branded U-verse TV service.
An appeals court in Washington, D.C., has ruled, courtesy of a trio of judges on the panel, to uphold AT&T’s planned acquisition of Time Warner. The judges’ decision relates to antitrust laws, and they believe that the acquisition would not break any of them:
“‘The government’s objections that the district court misunderstood and misapplied economic principles and clearly erred in rejecting the quantitative model are unpersuasive,’ the judges said in their opinion.”
There is no denying that in the U.S. the TV landscape has changed quite a bit, with various large companies swooping in to buy other large companies in an effort to consolidate resources. Streaming platforms are everywhere. So much so that even Apple is jumping into the fray this year. AT&T is striving to lead the charge thanks to its acquisitions, with HBO being a huge one all on its own.
[via Reuters]
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