Well, that didn't take long. Just over one month after Time Warner Cable's planned merger with Comcast ran afoul of regulators, the cable company has made a deal with Charter Communications.
Bloomberg first reported Monday that Charter was planning to buy out Time Warner Cable for about $55.1 billion in cash and stock. The deal works out to about $195 a share or 14 percent above Time Warner's share price after close Friday.
Charter and Time Warner confirmed the deal Tuesday morning in identical press releases.
The deal is for substantially more than the $45 billion Comcast offered Time Warner last year. Fears that the resulting company could exert too much influence on the broadband market stalled the potential deal for over a year, Comcast finally pulled the plug in April.
The collapse gave Charter a second chance to acquire a prize the company's been eyeing for some time now — the Comcast deal was proposed over multiple Charter attempts at a buyout.
According to Bloomberg, a last-minute offer to buy Time Warner from European cable provider Altice drove up the price of Charter's bid. Altice just acquired U.S. provider Suddenlink for $9 billion.
If this deal is successful, Charter could gain 12 million new customers in different markets. That's not quite on the same scale as the Comcast-Time Warner deal would have been, but Charter's buyout is still likely to face severe regulator scrutiny in the coming months.
This video includes images from Getty Images, Ildar Sagdejev / CC BY SA 4.0 and Steve Garfield / CC BY NC SA 2.0. Music from Skill Borrower / CC By NC Sampling Plus 1.0.
