AT&T lands approval to take over Time Warner
A federal judge rebuffs government’s effort to block $85.4 billion blockbuster merger.
A federal WASHINGTON — judge on Tuesday approved the blockbuster merger between AT&T and Time Warner, rebuffing the government’s effort to block the $85.4 billion deal, in a decision that is expected to unleash a wave of takeovers in corporate America.
The judge, Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court in Washington, said the Justice Department had not proved that the telecom company’s acquisition of Time Warner would lead to fewer choices for consumers and higher prices for television and internet services.
Media executives increasingly say that content creation and distribution must be married to survive against rising technology companies like Amazon and Netflix. Those two companies started making their own programming in just the last several years. But those tech companies now spend billions of dollars a year on original programming, and users can stream their video on apps in homes and on mobile devices, pulling attention from traditional media businesses.
Executives and investors had watched the six-week trial closely, looking for signs about how it might alter their ambitions. Comcast, for example, would like to outbid the Walt Disney Co. for some of 21st Century Fox’s assets, but has held off until the trial ended.
The ruling is a major setback for the Justice Department and its antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, whose decision to sue to block the deal broke with convention. Deals such as this one, in which the two companies are in related industries but do not produce competing products, are usually approved by federal regulators.
Delrahim had insisted that the two companies sell some major parts before getting government approval, a demand that the executives rejected. That led to the Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in November.
Leon’s opinion may also increase the chances that other deals already reached, like CVS’ bid for Aetna and T-Mobile’s proposed merger with Sprint, will survive regulatory scrutiny.
The deal was hatched in August 2016 when Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T, called Jeff Bewkes, his counterpart at Time Warner. Bewkes’ company, with its popular HBO shows, live NBA and NCAA sports broadcasting rights, and CNN, has been a takeover target for years.
The two then had a long lunch in the Time Warner dining room in New York and agreed that their industries were under siege. The purchase of Time Warner would give AT&T the premium television content it needed to make its bundle of wireless, television and broadband services more attractive to customers.
“We want people engaged with their mobile devices all day watching movies and video,” Stephenson said in April during the trial.
Presidential politics clouded the merger from almost the moment it was announced. President Donald Trump, while still a candidate, said he would block the deal “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.”
Those comments and his repeated criticism of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner’s unit Turner Broadcasting, raised speculation that Trump had pushed Delrahim and the Justice Department to block the deal.
But Delrahim swore to the court that he was not influenced by the White House, and Leon stopped most of the arguments about political interference from entering the trial.
Delrahim had argued that the only way antitrust concerns could be resolved was through the sale of major businesses. Last fall, he presented AT&T and Time Warner with two options: Sell the majority stake in either DirecTV or Turner Broadcasting. The companies rejected both options.
His position, which the White House said it supported, also drew accolades from left-leaning politicians and antitrust experts. They have been increasingly calling for the government to break up Silicon Valley giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon and to prevent greater consolidation in health care, media, transportation and agriculture.
In a speech Tuesday morning in Washington, Delrahim reiterated his concern. He said the merger “would unlawfully raise prices for cable-TV subscribers and harm online innovation.”