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Charter makes play for Time Warner
May 25, 2015 10:05 pm
The New York Times and other outlets reported that Tue., May 26 Charter Communications will announce a $55 billion deal to buy Time Warner Cable, and a $10 billion takeover of Bright House Networks. Last month, Comcast's attempt to buy Time Warner fell apart after regulatory scrutiny at the Federal Communications Commission about the number one and two cable and internet companies in the country. Charter is is not as larger, but several regulatory agencies would still have to approve the deal. "The two acquisitions will approximately quadruple Charter’s customer base to about 24 million, compared with Comcast’s 27 million," the story says. Last year AT&T bought the satellite television operator DirecTV for $48.5 billion. “It does not look to be nearly as big an antitrust concern as the Comcast deal was,” Gene Kimmelman, the chief executive of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, and a former antitrust official at the Justice Department, told the paper about the Charter deal. “In this instance, you’re combining the number two company with a smaller player that can be a bit of a counterweight to Comcast.” See the full story in The New York Times.