M&A Shark Week: four mergers and the one that split us
Comcast, Sky-ITV, Fox-Roku, Paramount-WBD. Evan and I agreed on three of them.
“So I’m gonna be the party pooper for once.”
Me on Fox buying Roku
No guest this week. Just Evan Shapiro and me plus four media mergers.
Let’s start with the money to set the scene. Comcast paid $39B for Sky in 2018, then took an $8.6B write down on it. Fox is buying Roku for $22B, well below what Roku was worth at its 2021 peak. Paramount is still chasing Warner Bros Discovery at $111B for a company worth a fraction of that.
Comcast breaks itself up. The week before we recorded, Comcast confirmed it would spin off NBCUniversal and Sky from its connectivity business, six months after cutting Versant loose in January. Management says it’s not a prelude to more M&A. Evan doesn’t buy that for a second and he named the buyer he thinks this is really being dressed up for.
Sky buys ITV. Confirmed the day we recorded: Sky is taking ITV’s broadcast and streaming arm for up to £1.6bn, leaving ITV Studios on its own with a content deal running to 2032. With Banijay and All3 now an $8bn super-indie, ITV Studios won’t stay orphaned for long.
Fox buys Roku. Here Evan and I split. He thinks Lachlan Murdoch’s $22bn move is the smartest thing a traditional media CEO has done in years. I don’t. We argue it out live.
Paramount and WBD hit the wall. The Justice Department cleared it. Everyone else is circling: a coalition of state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta has sued to block it, the Writers Guild too and the UK Secretary's Lisa Nandy is minded to intervene. Evan has a firm call on whether this $111bn deal ever closes.
Listen or watch and tell us which side you’re on these 4 M&A operations 👉🏻 APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE | DEEZER with more platforms here.
That’s it for today but before you go:
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