{"id":63458,"date":"2018-04-18T10:56:37","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=63458"},"modified":"2018-04-18T10:56:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:56:37","slug":"att-subsidiary-directv-asks-dropped-antitrust-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/att-subsidiary-directv-asks-dropped-antitrust-case.html","title":{"rendered":"AT&amp;T subsidiary DirecTV asks to be dropped from antitrust case"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">AT&amp;T subsidiary DirecTV asks to be dropped from antitrust case<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">DirecTV, the biggest U.S. pay TV company and a subsidiary of AT&amp;T, asked a federal court on Tuesday to drop it from the lawsuit that the government filed to stop AT&amp;T from buying movie and TV production company Time Warner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cDIRECTV is not the seller, the acquired entity, or a major stockholder of the acquirer,\u201d lawyers for the company said in a filing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In its request, DirecTV alleged that the Justice Department included the company as a defendant so it could use critical statements its executives made about the 2011 merger of Comcast and NBCU as part of the government\u2019s argument against the AT&amp;T\/Time Warner deal. AT&amp;T bought DirecTV in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Both instances involve a big pay TV distributor buying a movie and TV production company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In its complaint filed against the merger in November, the Justice Department said DirecTV previously warned that mergers of TV distributors and content makers \u201ccan much more credibly threaten to withhold programming from rival (distributors)\u201d and can \u201cuse such threats to demand higher prices and more favorable terms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">DirecTV has nearly 21 million subscribers, according to the complaint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Judge Richard Leon, who will decide if the merger may go forward, is hearing evidence on whether the $84.5 billion deal is illegal under antitrust law, as the government alleges, and should be stopped.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The witnesses this week are expected to include AT&amp;T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Source:-https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t\/att-subsidiary-directv-asks-to-be-dropped-from-antitrust-case-idUSKBN1HO3E2<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/att-subsidiary-directv-asks-dropped-antitrust-case.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AT&amp;T subsidiary DirecTV asks to be dropped from antitrust case DirecTV, the biggest U.S. pay TV company and a subsidiary of AT&amp;T, asked a federal court on Tuesday to drop it from the lawsuit that the government filed to stop AT&amp;T from buying movie and TV production company Time Warner. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[132228,146,117626,128711,30775,128710],"class_list":["post-63458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-att-subsidiary-directv-asks-to-be-dropped-from-antitrust-case","tag-business-news","tag-business-news-today","tag-latest-and-daily-business-news","tag-latest-business-news-usa","tag-live-updates-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}