Comcast has terminated its $45.2 billion merger agreement with Time Warner Cable, largely because US regulators were against the merger. Go-ahead for the merger had been in doubt since March after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indicated that it needed more time to conduct a thorough review of the deal.
Comcast first announced its intention to take-over Time Warner Cable in February 2014 and at the time, Comcast claimed that the merger was not anti-competitive. However, the US Justice Department and the FCC disagreed and have since been conducting protracted investigations into the implications of the deal. Another major cause of the delay in approving the deal has been a dispute between the FCC and the major TV channel owners over the confidentiality of programmers’ contracts with Comcast and other pay-TV providers.
