Charter Communications has renewed contact with Time Warner Cable following the collapse of the latter’s US$45bn sale to Comcast, reports the Wall Street Journal.
John Malone, who is the largest shareholder in Charter, reportedly called TWC chief…
Charter Communications has renewed contact with Time Warner Cable following the collapse of the latter’s US$45bn sale to Comcast, reports the Wall Street Journal.
John Malone, who is the largest shareholder in Charter, reportedly called TWC chief executive Rob Marcus after regulators effectively nixed the deal.
And Charter’s chairman, Eric Zinterhofer, dined with Marcus the evening before Comcast gave up on the deal.
TWC declined to comment on the report and Charter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Charter had been poised to become the country’s second largest cableco – it is currently number four – having agreed to buy the subscribers divested by Comcast in order to gain regulatory approval for TWC.
Charter’s attempted hostile takeover of TWC in 2014 prompted a higher offer by white knight Comcast.
Separately, Charter has said it is still working on its US$10.4bn takeover of Bright House, which was originally conditional upon approval of Comcast/TWC.
Speaking on a conference call last week, Charter’s CEO Tom Rutledge said: “Our agreement with [Bright House owner] Advance/Newhouse requires that we negotiate in good faith on the termination with Comcast transactions and we’re doing that. There isn’t more that I’ll say beyond that, except I want to compliment the quality of the Bright House assets and the management team, as we already have.”
