LONDON: Comcast Corporation CMCSA, Sunday announced that Comcast had beaten back Rupert Murchoch’s 21st Century Fox , which handled the bidding for new owner Disney, with the highest offer price in the auction to acquire the entire issued and to be issued share capital of Sky plc with an offer price of £17.28 per Sky share.
This implies a value of $40 billion (£30.6 billion) for the fully diluted share capital of Sky. Fox offered about $35 billion – or $20.63 a share, the LA Times reports.
Sunday’s announcement ends the 21-month long competitive bidding process for the satellite-TV service that boasts 23 million customers in five European countries.
On September 20th, the UK’s Panel on Takeovers and Mergers called the auction for September 22nd on the basis that neither Fox nor Comcast had declared their offer final, such that either offer may be increased or otherwise revised, deeming that a competitive situation existed for the purposes of Rule 32.5 of the Takeover Code.
The takeover panel announced the results a little after 7 pm GMT here after three rounds of sealed bids.
Sky’s independent board members quickly approved Comcast’s winning bid of $22.75 a share.
“The Independent Committee unanimously recommends that Sky shareholders accept the Comcast offer, and … urges shareholders to accept immediately,” the committee said in a statement.
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts said: “This is a great day for Comcast. Sky is a wonderful company with a great platform, tremendous brand, and accomplished management team. This acquisition will allow us to quickly, efficiently and meaningfully increase our customer base and expand internationally. We couldn’t be more excited by the opportunities in front of us. We now encourage Sky shareholders to accept our offer, which we look forward to completing before the end of October 2018.”
