In 1877, the father-in-law of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell founded the Bell Telephone Company. A subsidiary, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, was established in 1885. For many many years, AT&T -- they no longer operate telegraphs, by the way -- was the world's largest telephone company. Today, a judge cleared AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, the world's third largest entertainment company in terms of revenue, behind Comcast and The Walt Disney Company. And I'm guessing telephone rates and cable television rates will go even higher.
Judge clears AT&T purchase of Time Warner, creating entertainment colossus
Los Angeles Times, Jun 12 2018 2:30 PM
A federal judge today cleared the way for AT&T's $85.4-billion purchase of Time Warner, creating an entertainment colossus that promises to reshape the media business. US District Judge Richard Leon’s ruling in the biggest antitrust case of the century is expected to pave the way for more mega-mergers and was a stinging defeat to the Trump administration. Before a packed courtroom, Leon made it clear that the government had failed to prove any of its arguments against the merger during the six-week trial. "The parties have waged an epic battle," Leon said. "The court has spoken." AT&T is expected to quickly finalize its deal to buy Time Warner.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...612-story.html
Why the AT&T-Time Warner case was so closely watched
New York Times, Jun 12 2018
Judge Richard Leon's decision is expected to be taken as a green light for more takeovers. For example, Comcast is expected to make a bid for most of 21st Century Fox’s television assets — setting up a bidding war against the Walt Disney Company. It’s possible that the Justice Department will appeal the ruling, though, so things may not end here. Shares of other companies involved in mergers rose after the ruling. Shares of Sprint, which is seeking to buy T-Mobile, rose 1%. CVS and Aetna also rose, while Express Scripts, which is being acquired by insurer Cigna, added about 5%.
A key argument against the government’s antitrust case was that the deal is a so-called vertical merger, which means that the two companies do not produce competing products: One makes media content and the other distributes it. Some big takeovers lately have had similar profiles, e.g., Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods and the purchase of the insurer Aetna by the drugstore chain CVS, and they typically make it past regulators.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/b...st-ruling.html
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