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China: Comcast’s $3.8 billion DreamWorks purchase to face antitrust review

By  |  September 4, 2016

China will conduct an antitrust review of Comcast Corp.’s $3.8 billion purchase of “Shrek”-maker DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., a move that threatens to set back the US media giant’s plans to bolster its library of animated films and characters.

“We will probe into the case based on anti-monopoly laws,” Shen Danyang, spokesman at the Ministry of Commerce, said at a briefing in Beijing on Friday. Authorities received complaints that the deal could threaten competition in the Chinese market, said the spokesman, who didn’t identify the source of the objections.

China can block foreign deals it deems to threaten competition, though it rarely does so. That was the case two years ago, when the ministry blocked the formation of a global alliance by the world’s three biggest shipping lines — none of them Chinese — even though the agreement had been approved by US and European regulators.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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