The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit to block telecoms giant AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, the owner of CNN and HBO.<\/p>\n
The department said the merger would reduce competition and lead to higher consumer prices.<\/p>\n
AT&T vowed to fight the move, calling it a radical departure from US competition practice.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump objected to the deal during his campaign last year, fuelling the controversy.<\/p>\n
AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said he thought the acquisition had been on a good path “until recently”.<\/p>\n
He referred to concerns about possible political influence as the “elephant in the room”. President Trump is a vocal critic of CNN which is owned by Time Warner.<\/p>\n
Mr Stephenson said: “There’s been a lot of reporting and speculation whether this is all about CNN. And frankly I don’t know. Nobody should be surprised the question keeps coming up.”<\/p>\n
‘Higher bills’<\/strong><\/p>\n In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice claimed that the deal – valued at more than $85bn when it was announced last year – would harm American consumers.<\/p>\n Assistant attorney general Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, said: “It would mean higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy.”<\/p>\n He said the combination would hurt the emergence of new online television options and give AT&T the power to force rival pay TV companies to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars more” for Time Warner content.<\/p>\n The department has also denied political interference.<\/p>\n The decision to take legal action sets up a high-profile fight over US anti-trust law, which has rarely been tested in cases involving companies that do not directly compete.<\/p>\n ‘Concentration of power’<\/strong><\/p>\n George Hay, a professor of law and economics at Cornell, said there was “no question” the merger’s potential competitive impact merited serious review.<\/p>\n However, he said the lawsuit was noteworthy given the president’s comments during the presidential campaign.<\/p>\n “There would be nothing unusual if you didn’t have all of this political background,” he said.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit to block telecoms giant AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, the owner of CNN and HBO. The department said the merger would reduce competition and lead to higher consumer prices. AT&T vowed to fight the move, calling it a radical departure from US competition practice. US President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[9156,14770],"yoast_head":"\n