US cableco Bright House Networks reportedly plans to walk away from a US$10.4bn acquisition by larger rival Charter Communications.
The merger, inked in March, was contingent on the completion of Comcast’s US$45bn merger with Time Warner Cable…
US cableco Bright House Networks reportedly plans to walk away from a US$10.4bn acquisition by larger rival Charter Communications.
The merger, inked in March, was contingent on the completion of Comcast’s US$45bn merger with Time Warner Cable (TWC), abandoned in April following opposition from regulators.
However, the agreement between Charter and Bright House gave them 30 days after the Comcast/TWC deal fell through to renegotiate, about a fortnight of which remains, Reuters reported.
But Bright House, controlled by the Newhouse media family’s Advance Publications, now prefers to remain independent, although negotiations continue, the report stated.
One contributing factor is reportedly an agreement which allows TWC to negotiate programming rates for Bright House and the two companies to share networks.
Bright House, Charter and TWC declined to comment.
Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said on a conference call last week that the company is negotiating “in good faith” with Advance as their contract requires.
“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,” he added.
Bright House is the sixth largest cable operator with about 2.5 million customers subscribing to its video, data, home security and automation and voice services.
