I wonder if there is a possibility she does not sell?I knew it was rhetorical, I answered it for anyone who thought it was literal.
This is a near-certainty and would be the case regardless of the regulatory climate here. Any sale would have to get international approval. It also makes any theoretical timeline moot as this could drag on as long as the Activision-Blizzard merger did, which took nearly two years to consummate (mostly because of international challenges).
Now, the real question should be if Shari is willing to wait a potentially long time to close a deal.
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Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?
- Thread starter davideduardo
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What do you mean by 1980? Don't you remember 2017?
What the DOJ AT&T-Time Warner Antitrust Suit Means for Consumers
The Department of Justice has sued to block the AT&T-Time Warner mega merger. Consumer Reports examines how this might impact consumers.www.consumerreports.org
I do. Well enough to remember that was blocking a merger (which just happened to involve the progeny of the 1980 breakup), not breaking up an existing company. Two very different things.
What? Before we get around to involving Carly Simon?
And what, just watches her net worth go swirling down the porcelain convenience?
It was also unsuccessful because it was poorly litigated. That doesn't mean they won't do it again.
All I'm saying is the assumption that either political party won't attempt to break up big tech is wrong.
Fine. But the ATT-Time Warner suit isn't an example. It was a pre-emptive move intended to prevent anti-trust, not the breaking up of an existing entity that hasn't met the current definition.
If she can't sell the company—if there are no buyers willing or legally able to take it whole or in parts—she'll have no choice in that matter.
It's not my fault she decided to remerge Viacom the Second and CBS. Or anyone else's but herself.
And as the Hollywood Reporter piece illustrates, there are buyers willing to take parts. And if it's parts, that makes legally a lot easier.
The question then becomes how little Shari will take today rather than risk getting even less for it a year or two down the road.
That was to get into the streaming arena. Though the Viacom half was struggling by the mid-10s, so that was a sinking ship to buy.https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-viacom-mtv-sumner-redstone/#:~:text=In%20early%20April%2C%20Viacom%20announced,of%20employees%20have%20been%20dismissed.This article was written in 2015. Should have looked elsewhere to merge, even though it was probably easy to re-merge
That piece still fails to illustrate how Comcast or Discovery are not going to be challenged and haggled regulatory, not just here, but internationally. Just because Disney got 21CF in a soft-touch regulatory environment doesn't mean it will happen in a tougher environment.
Even waiting four months to pursue a sale to Discovery is a risk.
Again, from the article we're (ostensibly) discussing:
In August 2019, when the boards of Viacom and CBS officially decided to recombine the separate pieces of Sumner Redstone’s media empire, Shari Redstone used the opportunity to tout the saying her father was most famous for: “Content is king.”
“Never has that been more true than today,” Redstone said of the merger.
When the deal was announced, the combined value of the companies was about $30 billion.
Now it's $10 billion. And what ate two-thirds of the value was not something easily foreseeable four and a half years ago. They could be among the streaming survivors and Warners could be the one in trouble. The ball didn't bounce that way.
What do you mean by "current definition?" Big tech didn't get to be big by buying the competition. They kept creating new products and adding new businesses to their existing business, so they never faced government approval.
The fact of the matter is traditional media companies, such as Warner Brothers, have to compete against unregulated tech companies. That's what I'm talking about.
Challenged and haggled does not automatically equate no deal. If it did, American business would collapse.
Yeah, it is. Which is why SkyDance, RedBird, Comcast, or some combination of the three are also within the realm of possibility. Get the pieces right and Shari cashes out for more money quicker.
Hmmm....what wasn't foreseeable?
If the way Activision Blizzard took two years to consummate is any indication, there is no way Shari will cash out "quickly".
Yeah, but none of them are even close to a monopoly. Amazon's the closest, but even there, regulators are more interested in policing pricing than they are forcing a breakup.
Looking at the history of the U.S. government attempting to break up businesses is mercifully brief.
- 1911: Standard Oil. Broken up into 34 separate companies.
- 1984: AT&T.
The government wanted to break up Alcoa. Instead, they took Alcoa aluminum plants built during World War II and sold them to Kaiser and Reynolds, giving them production capacity on a par with Alcoa's and creating competition.
Smaller bites: The movie studios divesting their theaters (1948).
Failed attempts:
- IBM (1982) Case dragged on for 13 years before it was withdrawn by the government.
- Microsoft (2001) A judge ordered its breakup. Overturned by an appellate court. There was a settlement, but nothing like a breakup.
- Meta (2023) Appeals court ruled in Meta's favor.
That's it.
Again---if---big IF---someone wants to break up one or more of the big tech companies, precedent suggests they'd lose, and it would take a re-definition of monopoly to make it stick.
It's right there in that sentence. Maybe read it out loud.
Well, since all deals work on exactly the same timeline, then I guess she's f***ed.
But why has the value decreased that much?
(I swear to God the avatar just makes it worse....)
Are you going to really make me one more time explain that launching a streaming platform at the exact same moment as other major competitors and spending billions to instantly attain the scale that Netflix and Hulu had 15 or more years to attain, including loss-leader pricing to drive subscribers while losing as much as $3 billion a year is the problem?
Because that would be like the tenth time I've done that.
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