• Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting its linear TV business from streaming and studios.
• Comcast last month also spun off its cable networks — except Bravo — into a stand-alone company.
• The moves illustrate a cable business in decline, with both repositioning for M&A opportunities.

Warner Bros. Discovery is separating its linear television business from its streaming business and film studios.

It follows a similar move by Comcast, which announced in November it would spin off all of its NBCUniversal cable networks except Bravo into a stand-alone company.

The new corporate structure will be complete by the middle of next year, WBD said. Unlike Comcast, WBD won't spin its assets off into a separate company.

A new Global Linear Networks division will house TV properties like the Discovery Channel and CNN, while the Streaming & Studios side will be the home of Max and movie studio Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.

"Our Global Linear Networks business is well positioned to continue to drive free cash flow, while our Streaming & Studios business focuses on driving growth," WBD president and CEO David Zaslav said in a statement.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter said the move was meant to clean up the company's structure, which was formed in 2022 from the combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery. (Discovery itself was the product of its acquisition of Scripps Networks in 2017.)

This person said the company is still determining how the specific business units will be divided, and no leadership changes were planned.

The moves by both Comcast and WBD illuminate a cable business increasingly in decline. Their repositioning of properties could help them participate in potential mergers and acquisitions expected to reshape the media and entertainment industry in 2025.

Warner Bros. Discovery was supposed to create scale and value and help compete with Big Tech by mashing WarnerMedia's prestige networks like HBO and CNN with Discovery's lifestyle properties like HGTV. But its stock has sunk to about a third of its value at the time of its creation in 2022. (It was up about 14% Thursday morning on the news of the new organization.)

Industry observers say a Comcast-like spin wouldn't be favorable for WBD because it needs the cash from its linear channels to pay down the heavy debt it took on to form the company.

Still, they see WBD bulking up or shedding channels, with Paramount Global or Comcast seen as the most likely merger partners.

The announcement was met with mixed reactions from analysts. BofA Securities, which has long argued that WBD should sell assets or merge with another company, said in a note that it saw WBD's linear assets as a logical partner for the Comcast SpinCo, while its streaming and studio assets could be an attractive takeover target for multiple suitors.

Longtime ad industry advisor Brian Wieser said that as with the Comcast SpinCo, a WBD separation weakens the company on a few fronts, though. Without being tethered to the cable channels, he said, it'll be harder for WBD's streamer Max to grow its ads business, which is becoming increasingly important. The linear networks will lose leverage in distribution negotiations without Max and have trouble attracting talent if they're seen as a declining business, among other issues, he said.

In July, WBD reportedly floated the idea to investors of essentially undoing the 2022 merger to create the two separate divisions. And in August, the company said its TV assets were worth $9 billion less than it had anticipated just two years ago.

• Albertsons is terminating an attempted takeover by Kroger a day after a federal judge blocked the deal.
• In addition, Albertsons is suing its rival for failing to exercise "best efforts" to get approval.
• The suit marks a decisive end to the largest proposed supermarket merger in US history.

The grocery industry's biggest potential alliance is toast.

Albertsons said Wednesday that it is terminating Kroger's attempted $24.6 billion acquisition, a day after a federal judge blocked the deal due to antitrust concerns.

In addition, Albertsons filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against its rival, saying it failed to exercise "best efforts" to get approval for the deal.

"Rather than fulfill its contractual obligations to ensure that the merger succeeded, Kroger acted in its own financial self-interest, repeatedly providing insufficient divestiture proposals that ignored regulators' concerns," Albertsons' General Counsel and Chief Policy Officer Tom Moriarty said in a statement.

Albertsons is seeking "billions of dollars" in damages and a $600 million termination fee, which it says it is entitled to under its negotiating terms with Kroger.

A Kroger spokesperson called the claims "baseless and without merit."

"Kroger refutes these allegations in the strongest possible terms, especially in light of Albertsons' repeated intentional material breaches and interference throughout the merger process," the spokesperson said. "This is clearly an attempt to deflect responsibility following Kroger's written notification of Albertsons' multiple breaches of the agreement, and to seek payment of the merger's break fee, to which they are not entitled."

Albertsons' Moriarty called Kroger's approach to getting regulatory approval "willfully deficient" and said the suit is intended to "protect the interests of our shareholders, associates, and consumers."

The suit marks a decisive end of the largest proposed supermarket merger in US history, which faced challenges from the Federal Trade Commission and two US court cases.

Following Tuesday's injunction, both companies told BI they were disappointed by the ruling and would explore their options for next steps.

Lawyers for each side previously said the deal would be called off if it were blocked in Washington.

Data protection startup Cohesity completed its merger with Veritas’ enterprise data protection business, creating one entity with 12,000 customers that is valued at $7 billion. The deal was originally announced in February 2024. Cohesity valued Carlyle-owned Veritas’ data protection business at $3 billion at the time, according to CRN reporting. Cohesity declined to comment on […]

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They (regulators) said it couldn't be done (originally) but Three is finally approved for a merger. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given the go ahead for a merger between Three and Vodafone, first proposed by the companies in June 2023. The decision follows an independent inquiry group's investigation into the move's impact. 

CMA is allowing the deal to proceed as long as "both companies sign binding commitments to invest billions to roll out a combined 5G network across the UK," a release states. "The network commitment would be supported by shorter term customer protections which would require the merged company to cap certain mobile tariffs and offer preset contractual terms to mobile virtual network operators, for a period of three years." CMA and UK communication services regulator Ofcom will both oversee these commitments and the merged company must produce an annual implementation report.

Chair of the independent inquiry group, Stuart McIntosh, explained, "We believe the merger is likely to boost competition in the UK mobile sector and should be allowed to proceed — but only if Vodafone and Three agree to implement our proposed measures."

Three tried to merge with O2 in 2015, but the European Commission (yes, this was pre-Brexit) blocked it a year later. Then European Commissioner for competition Margrethe Vestager, stated that the concessions Three offered wouldn't offset the deal's potential to limit competition and bring higher prices. CMA concurred but, in 2021, allowed O2 to merge with Virgin Media, determining that it would not have a "substantial" impact on competition due to the nature of their combined offerings.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/three-and-vodafone-will-merge-in-the-uk-120007936.html?src=rss

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Vizio is now a member of the Walmart corporate empire. The retail company announced the completion of its $2.3 billion acquisition of the TV manufacturer on Tuesday.

Walmart didn’t just buy a TV brand. It now owns a new advertising platform. Vizio’s SmartCast OS collects huge amounts of data from its 19 million active accounts, and the company makes the majority of its money from the platform. Walmart’s new partnership with Vizio and its other smart TV brand Onn is sure to stir up the lucrative competition for advertising revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Walmart officially announced its plans to buy Vizio in February following early reports about its deal. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/walmart-completes-its-23-billion-purchase-of-vizio-222449239.html?src=rss

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The UK’s competition regulator has cleared Google's $2 billion investment in Anthropic, according to reporting by Bloomberg and others. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has officially concluded that the company hasn’t acquired “material influence” over the AI startup Anthropic as a result of the investment.

The continuing investigation into the partnership has also been squashed, with the UK antitrust watchdog saying that the investment doesn’t qualify for a full probe under merger rules. This is after phase one of a formal investigation was announced back in October.

“Anthropic is an independent company and our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others,” a company spokesperson said after the CMA announced its findings.

Google’s investment into Anthropic gives the company non-voting shares and consultation rights on significant business issues. Anthropic is best known for creating the Claude AI assistant, which is in direct competition with Google Gemini. Earlier this year, the CMA expressed concern regarding the “interconnected web” of partnerships and investments in the rapidly advancing world of AI.

The CMA also allowed a similar investment to go through in which Amazon forked over a whopping $4 billion to Anthropic. It didn’t even investigate that one, on the grounds that Anthropic’s UK turnover didn’t exceed £70 million and the two parties didn’t combine to account for 25 percent or more of the region’s supply of AI LLMs and chatbots.

Microsoft’s investment into OpenAI, however, is still under scrutiny by the CMA. The watchdog group did clear Microsoft’s investments with the AI startups Mistral and Inflection.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-uk-approves-googles-2-billion-investment-in-anthropic-162226536.html?src=rss

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