LONDON: Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox on Thursday sealed a $14.8-billion (14-billion-euro) cash deal for control of pan-European pay-TV giant Sky, creating a global entertainment titan.
The Murdoch-controlled Fox group said it had reached a formal agreement to buy the 61-percent stake in Sky that it does not already own.
The deal valuing Sky at £18.5 billion comes five years after Australian-born media mogul Murdoch failed to clinch a takeover after a notorious phone-hacking scandal at his newspaper empire.
“The strategic rationale for this combination is clear,” 21st Century Fox said in a statement issued in New York.
“It creates a global leader in content creation and distribution, enhances our sports and entertainment scale, and gives us unique and leading direct-to-consumer capabilities and technologies.
“It adds the strength of the Sky brand to our portfolio, including the Fox, National Geographic and Star brands,” the statement added.
London-listed Sky last week revealed that it had agreed to an offer of £10.75 per share from 21st Century Fox.
The agreement is for £10.75 per Sky share, above Thursday’s closing price of £9.88 after a rise of 0.5 percent.
21st Century Fox meanwhile already owns a 39.1-percent stake in Sky, whose five main markets are Austria, Britain, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
“As the founding shareholder of Sky, we are proud to have participated in its growth and development,” 21st Century Fox added in its statement.
“The enhanced capabilities of the combined company will be underpinned by a more geographically diverse and stable revenue base,” the company said.
“It will also create an improved balance between subscription, affiliate fee, advertising and content revenues. This combination creates an agile organisation that is equipped to better succeed in a global market.”
21st Century Fox is one of the world’s largest entertainment companies, with a vast portfolio of cable, broadcast, film, and pay TV and satellite assets across six continents.
Its broadcasting and cable properties include including FOX, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, National Geographic Channels, STAR India, 28 television stations in the United States and more than 300 international channels.
Sky broadcasts the 24-hour Sky News channel, blockbuster movies and live English Premier League football, and also provides Internet and telephone services.
The bid price represents a premium of 40 percent from Sky’s closing share price level last Tuesday, the day before the initial proposal was made.
21st Century Fox said Friday that it has long regarded its near 40-percent stake in Sky as “not a natural end position” for its overall strategy.
Back in 2011, Murdoch was forced to abandon his previous takeover bid of Sky — then known as BSkyB — as controversy raged over the hacking of celebrities and crime victims by his tabloid the News of the World, which was subsequently shut down.
Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, became Sky chairman in January. He had previously served as chief executive between 2003 and 2007.
In late 2014, Sky changed its name from BSkyB after completing the purchase of Sky Italia and a majority holding in Sky Deutschland, in a move which created a pan-European pay-TV giant.
Karen Bradley, culture minister in Britain’s conservative government, must now decide whether to refer Murdoch’s latest Sky takeover to media watchdog Ofcom.
The main opposition Labour party has raised objections to the deal and called upon regulators to examine the deal.
“Whether it will get past some of the more sceptical shareholders remains to be seen, and not forgetting the political legacy that surrounded the first attempt at a deal five years ago that caused that deal to fall through,” noted Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.
