Latest in mergers and acquisitions

UPDATED with stock movement, Trump comments: AT&T shares rose more than 4% to $37.88 in early trading Monday – one of the stock’s biggest one-day gains in months – after activist hedge fund Elliott Management disclosed a $3.2 billion stake in the telecom and media giant. The news attracted the interest of President…

Jim Fielding, a veteran consumer products executive, is one of the high-ranking Fox managers who will be exiting in the wake of Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of most of Fox. He had joined the company in 2017 from DreamWorks Animation, taking the title as President of Consumer Products and Innovation for Fox Televi…

Nearly 52% of shareholders in 21st Century Fox, the entity that is about to be acquired by Disney, have expressed a preference to receive cash in exchange for their shares after the Disney-Fox deal closes early Wednesday. About 37% of shareholders said they would prefer shares in New Disney (as the Fox-ified company…

EXCLUSIVE: Whistle, a rising sports and entertainment content entity repped by CAA, has set a deal to acquire New Form, the content outfit launched in 2014 with backing from investors such as Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Discovery. The companies declined to reveal terms of the deal, but said it involved a cash…

The massive wave of consolidation that reshaped the media and entertainment sector in 2018 has crested, leaving companies to “muddle through” an extended period until a willing seller materializes. That was one of the more provocative conclusions of a quartet of analysts on the NATPE panel “How Wall Street Watches…

Nexstar Media Group, which has grown in just 22 years from a single Pennsylvania radio station into a local TV giant, has reportedly struck a deal to acquire Tribune Media for about $4.1 billion. The acquisition, first reported by Reuters, would vault Nexstar ahead of Sinclair Broadcast Group to make it the top local…

Viet D. Dinh has been appointed Chief Legal and Policy Officer of “New Fox,” the Murdoch-controlled entity that will be spun off after most of 21st Century Fox is acquired by Disney. Dinh recently stepped down as an independent director on the board of 21st Century Fox. The new Fox portfolio will consist of the Fox…

Viacom CEO Bob Bakish hailed progress at Paramount Pictures and MTV and said the company is in dealmaking mode on a smaller scale during an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. One topic that did not come up at all during the 50-minute session was CBS or the recent exit of its longtime chairman and…

As it prepares to return to the courtroom in an effort to undo the $85.4 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner, the Department of Justice today outlined its strategy for its appeal of a federal judge’s June ruling allowing the deal to close. As they did during the initial trial in the spring, regulators pointed to…

Four months after closing the $14.6 billion acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, Discovery brass held their first TCA executive session, making the case for the company’s expanded footprint and focus on unscripted content its owns around the world. CEO David Zaslav appeared onstage with other top execs Nancy…

A 21st Century Fox shareholder has filed suit over Disney’s pending deal to acquire most of the company’s assets, claiming that shareholders have been given incomplete or misleading information before their vote on July 27. The complaint by Robert Weiss (read it HERE) was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in…

As legal and regulatory wrangling continues over Sinclair’s pending acquisition of Tribune Media, the broadcast group has once again articulated the upside of the deal. In a lengthy formal <a…