The telecoms giant AT&T has agreed to pay $85bn to buy the media powerhouse Time Warner and create one of the world’s largest media, TV and telecoms firms. The rival telecoms company Verizon is in negotiations to buy Yahoo and has already bought AOL, owner of the Huffington Post. The AT&T-Time Warner deal vindicates Bewkes’s, decision to turn down a $85-a-share takeover approach from 21st Century Fox two years ago. “DirecTV and Time Warner in a lot of ways is more similar than Time Warner and AT&T,” he said. It’s not a position that creates any synergies and it does create some dis-synergies, like the problem of managing a global media company from Texas.

Source: The Guardian October 22, 2016 20:00 UTC