Latest stoppage does not impact AT&T, DirecTV review
Three weeks after having the review process restarted, the Federal Communications Commission stopped the clock on its evaluation of Comcast’s pending $45 billion acquisition attempt of fellow cable provider Time Warner Cable.
In a Dec. 22 statement, the FCC noted the latest stoppage was tied to Time Warner Cable’s discovery of “a significant number of responsive documents that were not timely produced to the FCC.” That significant number totaled some 38,000 documents, including 7,000 documents withheld based on what the FCC claimed was inappropriate attorney-client privilege, and 31,000 documents that were not produced due to “vendor error.”
All documents were to be provided to the FCC on Sept. 11, with the withheld documents not discovered until earlier this month. Time Warner Cable said it would provide all documents by Dec. 22.
“The effect of these late disclosures has been to slow down the commission’s review of the Comcast/TWC/Charter transaction, in particular because sections of the review that staff had thought were complete now must be reopened to take account of the additional documents that have been disclosed,” the FCC noted in its filing. “This does not simply require examining the additional documents, but re-running many of the document searches and reconsidering the analyses that staff thought were complete.”
The 180-day review process was stopped on day 104, with plans to restart the clock on Jan. 12. The proposed transaction would combine the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 cable providers into a new “super No. 1” with more than 30 million customers and nearly half the domestic market.
“It’s tough to say what impact this revelation will have on the deal beyond the obvious delay of any decision into [first quarter] 2015,” noted 451 Research VP Brian Partridge. “It’s surely natural to be curious why such as large volume of documents might have been withheld in the original disclosures. Assuming no nefarious revelations, if anything, this delay will afford the FCC a brief extension to weigh the collective arguments that have been raised for and passionately against the merger of the two largest cable broadband service providers in the U.S.”
The FCC had initially stopped the review process in late October, citing difficulty in gaining access to important agreements related to the transaction, which was announced in February. The stop also included the review of AT&T’s $48.5 billion acquisition attempt of DirecTV, which was announced in May and had been grouped under the same steering committee by the FCC.
The FCC restarted the clock on both reviews in early December, resetting the Comcast/TWC clock to day 85 and the AT&T/DirecTV clock to day 70 of the review process. The latest stoppage did not include mention of stopping the AT&T/DirecTV review process, which sits today at day 97.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter?
Photo copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo
