UK: Disney offers to buy Sky News to aid Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Sky

Rupert Murdoch ratcheted up the pressure on Britain to approve his US$15 billion-plus bid for pay-TV group Sky by offering to sell or legally separate Sky News, aiming to head off objections the deal could give him too much political influence.

Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox said on Tuesday, April 3, that Walt Disney Co. was interested in buying Sky News. Alternatively, Fox said, Sky News could be legally separated within the Sky group.

Even if Fox’s proposals satisfy Britain’s government and competition regulator, however, it may still need to raise its recommended offer for Sky after US cable group Comcast Corp said it intended to make a higher counter-bid.

Since unveiling the 21st Century Fox bid in 2016 for the 61% of Sky that it did not already own, Mr. Murdoch has faced sharp questions over whether he would oversee too much of the media in Britain. His existing properties, including the newspapers The Sun and The Times of London, reach a third of British consumers. He also took fire for the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closing of The News of the World, the first newspaper that he acquired in Britain.

Full Content: New York Times

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