Charter announces plan to buy Time Warner Cable for $78.7 billion
The move follows Comcast’s failed bid to take over Time Warner after regulators seemed primed to stop it. Charter didn’t address that history.
That didn’t take long.
A month after Comcast dropped its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable under pressure from regulators, Charter Communications has picked up the ball and offered to buy Time Warner for $78.7 billion.
In a press release [PDF] issued Tuesday morning, Charter announced it is also planning to buy Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion, putting the new company, which would be called “New Charter,” very close to Comcast in terms of number of subscribers. A presentation document that came with the press release showed that the new company will have 19.4 million Internet subscribers, compared with Comcast’s 22.4 million.
Charter’s release uses much of its space to dig into stock prices and other investor concerns, but further down it touts service improvements as a key reason for the acquisition. The release quotes Charter President and CEO Tom Rutledge as saying:
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