While Time Warner Cable’s current merger à trois with Charter and Bright House is getting significantly less attention than TWC’s recent failed fling with Comcast, but these nuptials aren’t without their detractors. [More]
mergers and acquisitions
Budweiser Maker Officially Offers $104 Billion To Buy Miller
By 10.7.15
After SABMiller rejected a $100 billion takeover offer from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest beer company has come forward with a sweeter offer of $104 billion. [More]
Miller Reportedly Turns Down $100B Takeover Offer From Anheuser-Busch
By 10.6.15
With the deadline of Oct. 14 looming for Anheuser-Busch InBev to make a firm offer to acquire fellow beer biggie SABMiller, a new report says that the company’s early informal suggestion of “Hey, what do you guys think of $100 billion?” was turned away for being too low. [More]
Report: PetSmart Considering Adopting Petco, Buying It A Leash And Collar
By 9.18.15
Petco and PetSmart are the two largest pet retailers in the United States: about 50% of all money spent in pet stores nationwide goes to one of the two chains. The two companies have given each other a good sniff and considered merging in the past, but after some changes of ownership are considering it again. [More]
Completion Of $1.6B Orbitz, Expedia Merger Further Whittles Down Online Travel Agency Options
By 9.17.15
Despite the protests from the leading hotel industry group that a merger between Expedia and Orbitz would concentrate too much of the travel-booking market in one company’s hands – leading to fewer choices for consumers – the two companies have received regulatory approval and completed their $1.6 billion marriage today. [More]
Cablevision Agrees To Sell Itself For $18 Billion To European Telecom Giant Altice
By 9.17.15
While most U.S. cable/Internet operators have been looking at their fellow Americans as merger partners, New York-based Cablevision has made a $17.7 billion deal to sell itself to Altice, a Netherlands-based telecom titan. [More]
Anheuser-Busch InBev Asks Miller To Consider Taking Its Hand In Merger Marriage
By 9.16.15
It’s a mega-merger that’s been hinted at for years, but today it moved out of the realm of “people close to the situation” and into an an actual confirmation from Anheuser-Busch InBev that it has talked to the folks at SABMiller about combining the two beer giants into an even larger beer titan. [More]
Comcast CFO Says Failure Of Time Warner Cable Merger Is “Blessing In Disguise”
By 9.1.15
Comcast spent a year and a half, and untold millions, pushing for regulators to approve its $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. And then, when regulators said they would try to block the deal, the mega-merger evaporated. You might expect Comcast executives would still be stewing about their failed attempt to take over most of the cable and broadband service for both New York and Los Angeles, but at least one C-level suit at the company is trying to put it behind him. [More]
Hotel Industry Comes Out Against Merger Of Expedia & Orbitz
By 8.6.15
You might think of Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Trivago as competitors in the online travel-booking business, but most people probably don’t know that all of these brands fall under the Expedia Inc. ownership umbrella. And so will Orbitz if the pending $1.6 billion merger of the two companies is approved. The leading hotel industry trade group says that this consolidation has gone too far. [More]
Adidas Group Pays $240 Million To Download Runtastic Forever
By 8.5.15
Earlier this year, fitness gear maker Under Armour bought fitness-tracking apps MyFitnessPal and Endomodo for a total of $560 million. Now Adidas has decided to keep up with its competitor by downloading its own set of fitness apps, buying the eighteen apps in the Runtastic family for about $240 million. [More]
Comcast Reportedly Looking To Buy Vice Media, Or Maybe BuzzFeed, Or Maybe Vox…
By 7.24.15
Now that Comcast is done crying itself to sleep every night about its forced breakup with merger partner Time Warner Cable, the company is getting back to doing what it does best: No, not providing adequate cable/Internet service (don’t be silly!), but acquiring other businesses. [More]
The Death Star Finally Getting Its Satellite: FCC Moves To Approve AT&T, DirecTV Merger
By 7.21.15
The $49 billion merger of AT&T and DirecTV began so long ago, there aren’t many of alive who can tell the origin story of this long-delayed marriage. Today, it looks federal regulators are willing to give their blessing to the union. [More]
Netflix Is Totally In Favor Of Charter’s Plan To Buy TWC Because It Will Save Them Some Money
By 7.15.15
Netflix is almost 37% of all prime-time internet traffic. ISPs have been known to degrade that traffic until Netflix pays for peering. Netflix really hates having to make (and pay for) those agreements. And so Charter has quickly learned that the quickest way to Netflix’s heart is to promise not to do that. [More]
AT&T Claims 11.7M People Could Get Gigabit Fiber If DirecTV Merger Approved
By 7.6.15
AT&T and DirecTV are still hoping their mega-merger is on track for approval. While they wait, the FCC has been asking them to clarify some of their earlier statements about why this deal is a good idea for the public. And buried in those new answers is the nugget that post-merger, AT&T plans to bring fiber networks to almost 12 million customers… kind of. [More]
Report: AT&T, DirecTV Merger Likely To Be Approved By Justice Dept. With No Conditions
By 7.1.15
It’s been over a year since AT&T and DirecTV publicly announced their intention to become one big happy mega-media company, and the two are clearly getting a little restless waiting for their approvals. However, it looks like they are about to get the green light they so badly want. [More]
Charter Promises TWC, Bright House Merger Will Not Include Data Caps… For A Few Years, Anyway
By 6.29.15
Nobody likes home data caps. And nobody really likes their cable companies. So how can Charter and TWC look like good guys and maybe gain a little favor while planning out their merger? By promising to skip the data caps once they’re joined. At least, for a while. [More]
Smaller Cable Companies Concerned About AT&T/DirecTV Merger’s Impact On Prices For Regional Sports Networks
By 6.19.15
As we’ve seen with the ongoing locals sports broadcasting messes in Houston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, pay-TV operators with exclusive regional and team-specific networks sometimes put too high a price on their content, meaning other providers can’t afford to carry these stations and large swaths of fans are left in the dark. And a trade group representing small and midsize cable operators are worried that this problem may only get worse without certain conditions being put on the pending $49 billion merger of AT&T and DirecTV. [More]
Verizon Not Interested In Buying Dish
By 6.16.15
With everyone else in the cable/Internet/wireless business gone merger-mad, the only thing that telecom titan Verizon has purchased recently is AOL for a few billion bucks. The company has long been suggested as a prime buyer for satellite TV service Dish, but a top Verizon executive says that’s just not happening. [More]
