After Pushback, Murdoch Abandons Fox’s Pursuit of Time Warner
The article couches this in relatively nice terms but make no mistake: this is a big bloody loss for Fox and Murdoch.
At 4:07 p.m. Tuesday, the chief executive of Time Warner Inc., Jeffrey L. Bewkes, received an unexpected email.
“On behalf of our board and senior management team, I am writing to inform you that we are withdrawing our offer to acquire Time Warner, effective immediately.
Sincerely, Rupert Murdoch.”A hand-delivered letter bearing the same message arrived soon after.
Thus ended — for the time being, anyway — what was shaping up as the biggest media merger in a decade, a $150 billion union of two giant conglomerates. Together, Mr. Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and Time Warner would have created a colossus that loomed over the industry, combining the two biggest movie and television studios in Hollywood and enabling Fox to try to challenge ESPN’s sports broadcasting dominance. It also would have melded two vastly different corporate cultures: the generally liberal Time Warner, home of HBO, and the more conservative Fox, home to Fox News.
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