Comcast, in 2nd Try, Offers $65 Billion Cash for 21st Century Fox

Comcast announced an offer worth $65 billion for the bulk of 21st Century Fox’s businesses, setting up a showdown with the Walt Disney Company for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The all-cash bid by Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, came a day after a federal judge approved a merger between AT&T and Time Warner. Comcast executives had awaited the decision in that case before mounting their bid for 21st Century Fox.

In December, Disney struck a $52.4 billion, all-stock deal for Fox’s assets. Comcast, whose roughly $60 billion offer for the Fox assets was rebuffed in 2017, is now including contractual assurances such as a reverse breakup fee — worth about $2.5 billion — in the event a transaction is blocked by the government. Comcast’s new offer is about 19 percent higher than Disney’s proposal, according to its statement. Murdoch and his company’s board had rejected Comcast’s earlier offer partly on concerns the government would block the deal. But the AT&T-Time Warner decision also allayed many concerns that a Comcast takeover of 21st Century Fox’s businesses would be denied by regulators.