Comcast/TWC merger review to last until mid-2015 after months of delays

After months of delays, Comcast now says government review of its proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable will now stretch into the middle of 2015. When announcing the $45.2 billion deal 13 months ago, Comcast thought the merger would be a done deal by the end of 2014. It's still not clear whether the federal government will approve the takeover, which would join the nation's two largest cable companies. There have been several delays at the Federal Communications Commission, with the latest coming in March. "The FCC and the DOJ [Department of Justice] are continuing their regulatory reviews of the TWC transaction," Comcast Executive VP David Cohen wrote. "Given the FCC's recent decision to pause the shot clock, we have recently reassessed the time frame when we expect the government's regulatory review to be completed and now expect that the review should be concluded in the middle of the year." Both the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers have been delayed by disputes over FCC access to confidential programming contracts.