U.S. Sues to Block $85.4 Billion Merger Between AT&T and Time Warner.
'
The Justice Department on Monday sued to block AT&’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner, setting up a showdown over the first blockbuster acquisition to come before the Trump administration.
By challenging the deal, the Justice Department is taking a starkly different approach to antitrust issues than the Obama administration did. In 2011, for instance, the department approved a similar deal — Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal — after imposing numerous conditions on the transaction.
If the deal were to go through, the combined companies would form a media behemoth. By itself, AT&T is one of the nation’s largest internet and telephone providers. With its 2015 acquisition of DirecTV, the country’s largest satellite company, it also became the largest television distributor in the United States. . .
Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s top antitrust regulator, said the department opposed the deal on the grounds that the combination of the two companies would not be in the public interest.
“This merger would greatly harm American consumers,” Mr. Delrahim, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, said in a statement. “It would mean higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy.” . .
“Today’s D.O.J. lawsuit is a radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent,” AT&T’s general counsel, David R. McAtee, said in a statement. “We are confident that the court will reject the government’s claims and permit this merger under longstanding legal precedent.”
By moving to block the deal, the Justice Department embarked on perhaps its boldest effort to stop a merger since another AT&T transaction: the telecom giant’s effort to buy T-Mobile in 2011.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/business/dealbook/att-time-warner-merger.html?
= new reply since forum marked as read
