That Disney superdeal...
When Murdoch met Mickey – what the £39BILLION bid means for Britain
What’s happening?
WALT Disney, best known for bringing us Mickey Mouse, has agreed a £39 billion deal to buy the bulk of 21st Century Fox, the media giant run by Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan.
The tie-up will combine the might of Disney’s Star Wars and Marvel s uperhero movies with Fox’s X-Men and The Simpsons.
Why does Disney want Fox?
BOTH Disney and Fox are traditional film production companies that thrived in the 20th Century. But since Amazon and Netflix arrived on t he scene, they’ve been nervy. Together, they would be well placed to compete with the Silicon Valley interlopers.
Is this Rupert Murdoch hanging up his hat?
HE’S 86 and has settled down with his fourth wife Jerry Hall, the supermodel who is 25 years his junior. But Murdoch’s not retiring just yet. He claims he still has that ‘competitive spirit’ which has made him a powerhouse of the media world.
His family is swapping control of Fox for a 4.25 per cent stake in Disney, a much larger company. But the tycoon will keep hold of Fox News and its sport channels, which will be spun off into a separate firm run by him and his son Lachlan.
His newspaper empire, including The Sun and The Times in the UK, is unaffected by the deal as the titles are part of News Corp. Murdoch told investors on Thursday he sees the deal as a return to his roots as a ‘news man’. So he’s not heading off into the sunset just yet.
What’s James Murdoch’s role in all this?
THAT’S an interesting one. Some reports suggested that James Murdoch was being groomed as Disney’s next chief executive, but current boss Bob Iger is now set to stay on until at least 2021. Lachlan’s future running the new Fox business is secure, but what lies ahead for brother James is unclear.
Many in the industry reckon it could herald a business split from his father. Paolo Pescatore, a media analyst at consultancy CCS Insight, said: ‘Quite clearly there’s a huge divide between father and son.’
Isn’t Rupert Murdoch also trying to buy Sky (again)?
YES, which is where it gets complicated, but bear with us. Fox has been trying to buy the rest of Sky (it already owns 39 per cent) for a year but the £11.7 billion deal has been held up by UK regulators.
A previous attempt by Murdoch to take control of Sky was thwarted at the height of the phone-hacking scandal surrounding his News of the World newspaper.
The UK’s competition watchdog is investigating the impact on broadcasting standards and media plurality, but separating Fox News should resolve some of the issues.
That investigation will continue and Disney will take control of Sky if it gets the green light from the watchdog. If it doesn’t, Disney will still get Fox’s 39 per cent stake.
What does it mean for my Sky subscription?
NOTHING yet, but once Disney takes control it could change prices. Experts suggest that Disney’s control of Sky would help it compete with Amazon, should the latter try to muscle in for the lucrative rights to Premier League football matches, worth billions of pounds. Sky has just announced a tie-up with BT TV to share programming, including lucrative sports channels.
What do Murdoch’s enemies in the UK make of the deal?
MURDOCH has always ruffled feathers. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader Vince Cable are vocal opponents of Fox’s takeover of Sky. Murdoch’s opponents hailed the Disney deal as a ‘defeat’ in his bid to control Sky.
Is it a done deal?
NO. It is expected to take 18 months and will face scrutiny by regulators. The US Department of Justice is trying to block the merger of fellow media giants AT&T and Time Warner.
But that merger is opposed by President Trump, who has given the Disney-Fox deal his blessing.