Comcast clinches Sky deal

US media conglomerate Comcast has emerged victorious in the battle for broadcaster Sky in a blind auction overseen by the UK’s Takeover Panel.

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(Image credit: 2018 Getty Images)

"No wonder there's a market for Uber," says Alistair Osborne in the Times. "Some poor American tourist took a black cab round London and ended up with a £30bn bill." Comcast's boss Brian Roberts's (pictured) £30bn purchase of Sky implies a price of £17.28 per share, which represents a 125% premium. Comcast's shares slipped by 6% on the news due to fears that he had "grossly overpaid", as research group MoffettNathanson told the Times. The US media conglomerate secured its prize in a blind auction overseen by the UK's Takeover Panel. It outbid Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, which already owns 39% of the British satellite television broadcaster. Fox, backed by Disney, bid just £15.67 a share.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.