AT&T Inc, the No. 2 wireless carrier, on Thursday closed its $85 billion deal to acquire media company Time Warner Inc after U.S. antitrust regulators indicated they would not seek a delay.
According to Reuters, the deal, first announced in October 2016, was opposed by President Donald Trump. AT&T was sued by the Justice Department, but won approval from a judge to move forward with the deal on Tuesday following a six-week trial.
The Justice Department still has 60 days to appeal the decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, even though the deal has closed.
Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday that the deal to marry AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses with Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law. The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.
U.S. President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of Time Warner’s CNN coverage, denounced the deal when it was announced in October 2016.
In its lawsuit aimed at stopping the deal, filed in November 2017, the Justice Department said that AT&T’s ownership of both DirecTV and Time Warner, especially its Turner subsidiary, would give AT&T unfair leverage against rival pay TV providers that relied on content like CNN and HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
The AT&T ruling is expected to trigger a wave of mergers in the media sector, which has been upended by companies like Netflix Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
The first to come was Comcast Corp’s $65 billion bid on Wednesday for the entertainment assets of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.
The new AT&T will consist of four businesses:
- AT&T Communications, housing all its U.S. mobile, broadband and other communications services
- AT&T’s media business, which is where HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. will live. A new name for that business is on the way, which means the “Time Warner” brand is out. The end of an era!
- AT&T International, providing mobile services to Mexico and pay-TV services to 11 countries in South America and the Caribbean
- AT&T’s advertising and analytics business.
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