Disney, to acquire 21st Century Fox, will Comcast cut through the deal?
By Chitali Gupta | Published on 30/07/2018 | Music and Entertainment
The United State’s fourth-largest media conglomerate, 21st Century Fox will be soon taken over by the Walt Disney Company. In the fourth quarter of the year 2017, the Walt Disney Company gave a statement about this deal that involved 52.4 billion dollars.
It was decided that if the deal was successful, then the Walt Disney Company would be acquiring 21st Century Fox including the 20th Century Fox studio, the FX cable channels, the Fox regional sports networks and U.K.-based Sky News.
The Fox Entertainment Group
Subsequent to the phone-hacking scandal that plagued the News Corporation and its other properties, Rupert Murdoch, the founder and CEO of the company decided to split his empire.
The multinational mass media corporation was split into entertainment and media properties and it was announced on June 28th, 2012. While the publishing properties were named as new News Corporation, the present News Corp was named as 21st Century Fox.
The 21st Century Fox has various media outlets with ownership in numerous foreign operations. Following its official formation, the 21st Century Fox participated in various deals, while most of them proved unsuccessful. In June 2014, there was a bid to acquire Time Warner; however, the proposal was declined by the latter’s board of directors. This was followed by series of other such deals and proposals.
On April 10th, 2018, the European Commission officially raided offices of 21st Century Fox in London following an investigation on the broadcasting rights of a sports program.
In the wake of the $52.4 billion proposal by the Walt Disney, the Comcast submitted a proposal to buy Fox assets for $65 billion. The bidding war started and the Walt Disney Company reportedly increased its bid to $71.3 billion.
What is 21st Century Fox thinking?
Even though Comcast bid 16% higher than Disney, Rupert Murdoch went against the proposal and made the deal with Disney.
The reason for rejecting the all-cash deal with Comcast was due to the growing concern of obtaining regulatory approval from the federal government. Previously, Comcast rejected to offer protection against regulatory risks. That was one of the major reasons for the Fox media to back off the deal.
Even though the federal judge approved the AT&T deal with Time Warner, the Fox Media went ahead to complete its deal with the Walt Disney Company.
The chase finally came to an end. Comcast lost even after bidding 16% higher than Disney. As per Bloomberg Intelligent Analyst Paul Sweeney, the latest offer made by Disney to Fox was a very aggressive move by CEO Bob Iger, but it finally paid off.