For the past six weeks, AT&T has been in court over concern of its want to purchase Time Warner for a total of $85 billion. On Tuesday, June 12, Judge Richard Leon of the United States District Court in Washington D.C. officially approved the deal.
Leon says that the acquisition doesn’t violate any antitrust laws, and in response to the government asking Leon to put down his own ruling to potentially kill the purchase, Leon noted that the quest was “manifestly unjust.”
AT&T was originally sued by the U.S. Justice Department for trying to buy Time Warner, and if it wants to, the Department has the option of making an appeal before AT&T moves to complete the deal six days from now.
Per Makan Delrahim of the Justice Department —
We continue to believe that the pay-TV market will be less competitive and less innovative as a result of the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner.
On the flip side, David McAtee of AT&T’s general counsel says:
We are pleased that, after conducting a full and fair trial on the merits, the Court has categorically rejected the government’s lawsuit to block our merger with Time Warner.
With AT&T and Time Warner joining forces, the two companies claim they’ll be able to better compete with the likes of Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, and others. AT&T and Time Warner will offer better-targeted ads to their customers, and as a result of all this, it’s expected that prices will be lowered at some point.
AT&T says it’ll complete the purchase of Time Warner on June 20, and seeing as how the wireless carrier first announced these plans on October 22 of 2016, some resolution is well overdue.
What do you think about AT&T buying Time Warner? Drop a line in the comments below.
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