By Greg Roumeliotis and Jessica Toonkel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – AT&T Inc announced on Saturday an agreement for 85.400 millions of dollars to buy Time Warner Inc, in which represents the operation’s most daring to date a telecommunications company to acquire content to stream through your network to attract a growing number of viewers online.
The biggest operation in the world this year, if approved by regulators, would give AT&T control of the cable tv channels HBO and CNN, the film studio Warner Bros and other coveted resources multimedia.
The alliance will probably be the subject of intense scrutiny by u.s. antitrust enforcers, concerned that AT&T may try to limit the distribution of material of Time Warner.
AT&T will pay 107,5 dollars for each share of Time Warner, one-half in cash and half in shares, for a total value of 85.400 millions of dollars, according to a company release. AT&T said it expected to close the deal by the end of 2017.
AT&T, based in Dallas, said that the Department of Justice of united States would review the agreement and that the companies were determining what licenses from the Federal Communications Commission, in their case, they would have to be transferred to AT&T in the operation.
u.s. lawmakers were already concerned about the purchase by the cable company Comcast Corp 30,000 million dollars of NBCUniversal, and several asked for an analysis of regulatory depth of the offer of AT&T.
“Such a massive consolidation in this industry requires a rigorous assessment and a serious scrutiny,” said u.s. senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Justice commission of the Senate and former attorney general of Connecticut. “I will look closely at what it means that this merger for consumers and their pockets.”
republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in an act that would block any agreement AT&T-Time Warner if he wins the election November 8. Trump has complained about the media coverage of your campaign, above all by CNN of Time Warner.
“it Is too much concentration of power in the hands of very few,” said Trump.
Representatives of his rival democrat Hillary Clinton, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
AT&T, whose core business of wireless telephony and broadband services is showing signs of a slowdown, has already taken steps to becoming a giant of the media, and last year bought the provider of DirecTV satellite television for 48.500 million dollars.
I Was about 142 million mobile customers in north America as of June 30, and around 38 million subscribers video through DirecTV and U-verse.
Time Warner is a major force in the sector of film, television and video games. Its assets include the HBO channels, CNN, TBS and TNT, as well as movie studio Warner Bros, which produced the franchise of “Batman” and “Harry Potter”. The company also has a stake of 10 percent in the web video content Hulu.
The ceo of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, told journalists in a conference call that owning Time Warner and all of its contents will provide a greater competitive advantage, simply continue to pay their licenses.
conversations between Stephenson and the ceo of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, began in August, said. “Jeff and I had a vision that if you joined these two, we could innovate much faster,” said Stephenson.
Bewkes, who rejected an offer of 80,000 million dollars of the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc in 2014, will remain in the company for an indefinite period to help with the integration.
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