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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

Comcast beats Fox in Sky auction with $39B bid [phys.org]:

After three rounds of secret bidding on Friday and Saturday, Comcast offered the higher price of 17.28 pounds ($22.58) per share for Sky, the equivalent of nearly 30 billion pounds ($39 billion). Rival 21st Century Fox offered 15.67 ($20.47) per share.

In a statement, Sky recommended that shareholders accept Comcast's offer and sell their shares immediately. Comcast said it hoped to complete the takeover by the end of October.

[...] Britain's regulator, the Takeover Panel, set up the auction to reduce uncertainty for Sky after months of offers and counteroffers from the American media giants. Sky is Europe's largest pay-television operator, with 22.5 million customers in seven countries and popular programming including English Premier League soccer and "Game of Thrones."

Fox owns 39 percent of Sky. It now must decide whether to sell its stake or remain a minority shareholder.

[...] A bidding war emerged last December, when Comcast made an offer for Fox's entertainment assets, which Walt Disney Co. is in the process of buying for about $71 billion (54 billion pounds). Comcast eventually dropped out of that contest to focus on its acquisition of Sky.

Its winning bid came at a steep price. Comcast initially made a $31 billion (23.7 billion pound) bid for Sky last February, then raised that bid to $34 billion (26 billion pounds) in July.

[...] The last time such an auction took place was in 2007, when Tata beat out CSN to buy Britain's Corus, creating what at the time was one of the world's top five steelmakers.

How is Comcast going to pay for the acquisition? Even higher monthly rates for cable TV and internet service? SpaceX's Starlink Internet [wikipedia.org] cannot come any too soon.

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