Major Shareholder in Favor of Disney-Fox Merger
In another good sign for the Disney-Fox merger, one of the biggest shareholders on Fox’s side of the equation, who favored a deal with Comcast, is now encouraging Fox to proceed with their current course of action.
As you know, Comcast has recently decided that their interests are not in acquiring 21st Century Fox (a process that would interrupt and potentially cancel the Disney-Fox merging process), but in acquiring a majority stake in Sky (which was a separate deal that Fox and Disney – to a lesser extent – were looking into) in what appears to be an unspoken compromise between the two companies. As such, the Disney-Fox merger should proceed as planned, and voices that were previously protesting the merger in favor of a Comcast-Fox merger are likely to fall silent in the coming days.
Case in point, we have Fox’s second-largest shareholder – TCI Fund Management – now claiming that the Disney-Fox plan is the best course of action in spite of previously arguing in favor of Comcast-Fox. They’re so confident, in fact, that the majority of this group’s representatives have already voted in favor of the merger. Given the sheer size of the investors involved here (TCI is only behind the Murdoch family in terms of ownership in Fox), that it strongly suggests that a merger is going to happen and it represents another obstacle removed from Disney’s path to join forces with Fox.
In any case, the official vote will conclude by this Friday, and it won’t take long for Disney and Fox to make announcements about the next major steps in the legal process. Between Disney-Fox and AT&T/Time Warner, the landscape of the entertainment industry is decisively changing, and it remains to be seen if the old media titans can take on upstarts like Netflix and Amazon Prime as streaming looks to become a more and more prevalent (and lucrative) platform in the years ahead.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
