Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ACQUISITIONS & MERGERS NEWS: Cable conference panel debates approval of Comcast-TWC, AT&T-DirecTV deals, (Mar 5, 2015)
Organizations Mentioned:AT&T | AT&T/DIRECTV | Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP | Dish Network | Federal Trade Commission | Public Knowledge | Time Warner Cable, Inc.
By Lynn Stanton, TR Daily
Participants in an American Cable Association Summit panel on the FCC and antitrust reviews of two pending transactions involving major multichannel video programming distributors saw fewer problems for the AT&T, Inc.–DirecTV deal in winning regulatory approval than for the Comcast Corp.–Time Warner Cable, Inc., deal.
Ross Lieberman, ACA’s senior vice president–government affairs, said, “This deal is not going as Comcast planned.” However, he added, “I still think it’s probably better than 50% [that the deal will be approved].” He said that concerns about the AT&T-DirecTV deal are not as great and that “it’s likely to pass.”
Jeffrey Blum, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at Dish Network, expressed concern that if the TWC deal goes through, “Comcast could buy every cable company” in the country. “There’s no limiting principle here” if the TWC deal wins approval, he said.
However, Blum suggested that the FCC’s recent request to programmers for information on their programming agreements with Comcast, TWC, or online video distribution (OVD) service providers does not bode well for the approval of the Comcast-TWC merger. “They’re concerned that Comcast-Time Warner Cable has the ability to go to programmers and pressure them” not to sell programming to OVD providers, he said.
Former Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, now a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and counsel to Comcast, disagreed, saying, “There doesn’t seem to be a reason to block the merger.”
Regarding the timing of the reviews, Mr. Lieberman said, “From my perspective we’re about halfway through,” regardless of what the FCC’s merger review shot clock says. “The real discussion [among regulators] of whether this deal [Comcast-TWC] is going to be thumbs-up or thumbs-down has yet to occur,” he added. Leibowitz responded, “We are still hoping for a speedy resolution.”
John Bergmayer, senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, said that his organization has asked the FCC to deny the AT&T-DirecTV application, but that it also offered suggestions for conditions to “remedy” its concerns. Public Knowledge also told the FCC that AT&T “hasn’t made a positive public interest benefit case,” he added.
AT&T VP–federal regulatory Hank Hultquist said that there “has been support for the public interest benefits that we identified from a broad range of parties.”
Leibowitz said, “We believe the FCC will find public interest benefits from our merger.”
Blum said that the Comcast-TWC deal has implications for anyone who cares about advertising, set-top boxes, programming, “access to content for over-the-top,” or sports programming. He also argued that the conditions regulators imposed on Comcast’s NBCUniversal joint venture several years ago “have failed.”
News: AcquisitionsMergers Antitrust