AT&T sews up $85B purchase

Time Warner Inc. is no more.

Late Thursday, AT&T Inc. announced that it completed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc., just two days after a federal judge in Washington gave the deal the green light. AT&T wasted little time consolidating its hard-fought prize.

Television networks HBO, TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and the Warner Bros. movie and television studio, based in Burbank, now have a new boss: John Stankey. The 55-year-old executive is a Los Angeles native and a 32-year veteran of AT&T and its predecessors.

Time Warner Chief ExecMINNEAPOLIS

● utive Jeffrey Bewkes will serve as a senior adviser to Stankey and AT&T during the transition.

AT&T and Time Warner have spent the past six months battling the Justice Department to gain its approval for the deal. The Justice Department sued in November, alleging that AT&T would use Time Warner’s content to put its rivals at a disadvantage.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled against the government, saying it had failed to prove its case that the AT&T-Time Warner combination was anti-competitive.

AT&T will separate its business into four distinct units: communications, which encompasses mobile phone service, broadband Internet and DirecTV; advertising and analytics; international operations; and now the Time Warner properties, which last year generated $31 billion in revenue.

“We offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first

entertainment experience,” Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive of AT&T, said in a statement. “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.”

Time Warner was formed by the 1990 merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc., the magazine empire. In 1996, it bought Turner Broadcasting. At one point, the company was one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world, churning out popular movies, 24-hour newscasts and such popular magazines as Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

AT&T in its statement said it would announce a new name for the Time Warner unit later.

Earlier on Thursday, AT&T negotiated a settlement with the Justice Department to waive a waiting period for the closing, according to Bloomberg News. AT&T closed the deal about three hours later. AT&T was pushing to complete the transaction before a June 21 deadline, when its Time Warner merger agreement

was due to expire. If it wasn’t wrapped up by then, either company could walk away and AT&T would have to pay Time Warner a $500 million “breakup” fee.

Some legal experts believe the government could have a hard time persuading the appeals court to overturn Leon’s decision. Opposing the merger forced the antitrust regulators to argue against standing legal doctrine that favors mergers among companies that don’t compete directly with each other.

The merger will fuse a company that produces news and entertainment with one that funnels that programming to consumers. AT&T cast the deal as a necessary step to

compete against the likes of Amazon, Google and Netflix.

A day after Leon ruled, Comcast launched a $65 billion cash bid for the bulk of 21st Century Fox, topping Disney’s all-stock $52.5 billion offer in December.