As you may have seen in the news, Netflix has agreed to acquire Warner Bros, including its film and television studios, HBO, and HBO Max, for an implied equity value of $72 billion and an enterprise value of $82 billion including debt. That is a significant premium for a just part of company that was worth about $26 billion a year before. Of course, the deal must still receive regulatory approval and will take a year to 18 months to come into effect. Netflix once said its job was to become HBO faster than it became Netflix. Now it looks like it has.
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The Comcast board has approved the previously announced separation of its cable television networks and associated online services and the creation of an independent, publicly traded company called Versant Media Group. The new company is expected to begin trading in early January 2026 under the Nasdaq symbol VSNT. Versant has meanwhile acquired Free TV Networks.
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Accedo and Magine Pro have agreed to carve out and merge their respective software platform businesses Accedo One and Magine Pro into a new jointly owned company. The new entity will operate separately from the Accedo Group but use the reach of Accedo as a key business partner and reseller of products and solutions. Given the similarity of their offerings, a strategic combination by both Swedish companies appeared inevitable.
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Final bids are expected for Warner Bros Discovery before it enters a period of exclusive negotiations with a prospective purchaser. Paramount Skydance, Comcast, and Netflix submitted initial bids and WBD is expecting best and final offers.
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The BBC iPlayer catalogue is approaching the number of hours of programming available on Netflix, although both offer less than Amazon Prime Video. They are all well ahead of other players in the United Kingdom. In its annual report on the BBC, the regulator outlines the challenges facing the corporation and the requirement for a regulatory regime to support its public purposes.
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The Macquarie investment fund has agreed the sale of its 26.5% stake in media services and transmission infrastructure provider Arqiva to an undisclosed buyer for just £16.5 million, implying a valuation of the company at £62 million. It represents a collapse in the value of the infrastructure assets over the price originally paid for them. The ultimate value of Arqiva is highly dependent on decisions about the future of digital terrestrial television transmission in the United Kingdom.
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