Comcast Corp, the biggest cable operator in the US, has offered to pay US$31 billion to buy Sky PLC, the European pay-TV group that Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc has already agreed to buy.
Comcast, which owns NBC and Universal Pictures, said it was offering ￡12.50 per share, significantly more than the ￡10.75 per share agreed by Fox.
The proposed offer pits Comcast against Murdoch, the 86-year-old media tycoon who helped launch Sky in Britain, and also against Walt Disney Inc, which has agreed to buy a string of assets from Fox once the deal is done, including Sky.
Comcast said it had not yet engaged with Sky over the proposal.
“We would like to own the whole of Sky and we will be looking to acquire over 50 percent of the Sky shares,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in a statement.
“Sky and Comcast are a perfect fit: we are both leaders in creating and distributing content,” Roberts said on a conference call. “Innovation is at the heart of what we do: by combining the two companies we create significant opportunities for growth.”
Sky’s chairman is Murdoch’s son James, who is the CEO of Fox, so Comcast would have to gain the support of independent shareholders for its better offer if it does not make a hostile bid.
Fox agreed to buy the 61 percent of Sky it did not already own in December 2016, but the takeover has been repeatedly held up by regulatory concerns that Murdoch controls too much media in Britain.
Some Sky shareholders have also started to complain that the offer was too low.
In December last year, hedge fund manager Crispin Odey argued that Sky was being sold too cheaply.
Britain’s competition regulator last month said that Murdoch’s planned takeover should be blocked unless a way was found to prevent him from influencing the network’s news operation, Sky News.
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