US DoJ throws $85 billion spanner in the works of AT&T-Time Warner

The US Department of Justice has decided to appeal the June 12 court ruling allowing AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, it announced late on Thursday.

In a brief Notice of Appeal filed on July 12, the DoJ notified the District Court that it intends to bring the case to the Court of Appeals against the ruling that will allow AT&T’s planned acquisition of Time Warner to go ahead with no restrictions.

The US government, which had until August 12 to ponder an appeal, took a month to decide it would lodge an objection to the mega-acquisition. US entertainment industry news site Deadline sourced a copy of the Notice, signed by Craig Conrath, who was leading the government’s legal team during the trial. It doesn’t elaborate on the grounds upon which the appeal would be lodged, but the decision to appeal seems to have caught AT&T by surprise.

“The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned,” David McAtee, the operator’s General Counsel, said in a statement. “While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances.  We are ready to defend the Court’s decision at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” he blustered.

The ramifications of the potential appeal could hardly be greater — not only regarding the future of a newly-created WarnerMedia business, and whether it might need to decouple from its parent company, but also for the whole telecom and media industries. The boardrooms of Comcast and Disney will be full of sweaty palms (yuk!), as the outcome of the appeal will set a precedent for future vertical integration deals, including their bidding war for 21^st Century Fox.

If the DoJ was to win the appeal, the US Solicitor General could bring the case to the Supreme Court, where the judges generally siding with President Trump are in the majority. Since the days when he was a candidate, Mr. Trump has been a vocal opponent to the merger, citing the danger of “too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” However, such a decision would not be without a twist: Eriq Gardner, the Senior Editor at The Hollywood Report, discovered in a disclosure paper that John Roberts Jr, one of the Supreme Court Chief Justices, still holds Time Warner shares.

AT&T has been moving very fast after the June 12 ruling to integrate the two companies, from appointing executives to stamping its authorities over HBO, although it has decided to leave Turner Broadcasting, the owner of CNN among other assets, independent until February 2019. However, it has already broken at least one promise related to the deal: instead of making the service more affordable, it just raised the monthly bill for its DirecTV Now service by $5.