Charter Buys Time Warner Cable
Sometimes, patience pays off, said Sydney Ember in The New York Times. After twice trying to buy Time Warner Cable, the country’s No. 2 cable company, Charter Commu ni ca tions finally landed its long-sought prize this week, with a $55 billion deal. The Connecticut-based Charter, currently the No. 4 U.S. cable company, last tried to buy TWC in January 2014, only to have Comcast swiftly outbid it with a $45 billion offer. But the Comcast-TWC merger hit the skids in April, when Washington regulators indicated they would block the deal. That put Charter back “in the driver’s seat.”
This deal will make Charter the second-largest cable television operator in the U.S., said Jim Puzzanghera and Meg James in the Los Angeles Times. The merger also stands a better chance of winning regulators’ favor than Comcast’s TWC bid simply because “the marriage is smaller.” The Comcast deal would have made it the largest pay-TV provider in 17 of the top 20 U.S. markets, with control of 57 percent of the high-speed broadband market. By contrast, the new Charter will dominate just five of the top 20 cable markets and control less than 30 percent of the broadband market.
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