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UK: Sky and 21st Century Fox agree £18.5bn takeover deal

By  |  December 15, 2016

Trying once again to strengthen control of its media empire on both sides of the Atlantic, the Murdoch family’s 21st Century Fox on Thursday formally submitted a roughly $14.6 billion offer to buy the 61% of British pay-TV giant Sky it doesn’t already own.

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    Fox offered £10.75 a share for the Sky stake, valuing the whole of Sky around $23 billion.

    The offer price is unchanged from the deal’s previously disclosed terms, but Fox said it would pursue the tie-up through a so-called scheme of arrangement rather than as a straightforward tender offer.

    That type of merger agreement allows an acquirer to more quickly purchase 100% of its target but could be harder to pull off because Fox’s stake will be excluded from voting on the transaction. By contrast, a tender offer could have allowed Fox to obtain majority control of Sky more quickly but might have delayed its path to 100% ownership, meaning Fox would have had to deal with minority shareholders for some time.

    Full Content: Wall Street Journal

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