The British government suggested Tuesday it may challenge Paramount Skydance’s blockbuster $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros.Discovery, a merger that has drawn scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.Lisa Nandy, the United Kingdom’s culture and media secretary, expressed concerns about concentrating “control” of media assets in the hands of fewer corporate owners.“Following engagement with the parties and independent research, my department has today written to the current and proposed owners of Warner Bros Discovery on my behalf to inform them that I am minded to intervene,” Nandy said in a statement.In the statement, Nandy highlighted the need to ensure “a sufficient plurality of views in news media” and “a sufficient plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises, or the enterprises providing on-demand program services.”Paramount Skydance spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement shared with Sky News, the company said it was “confident that our proposed transaction does not pose any media plurality issues in the U.K.” Separately, the U.K.’s top antitrust watchdog continues to carry out a review of how the proposed merger would affect British economic competition and the country’s media consumers.The U.K.
Competition and Markets Authority is set to announce the next steps in that investigation in early August.The U.S.Department of Justice has already cleared Paramount Skydance’s tie-up with Warner Bros.
Discovery, a union that would put two historic Hollywood film studios and a sprawling portfolio of television assets under the same roof.The Justice Department’s antitrust division, in an unusually lengthy statement earlier this month, said “the transaction is not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers.”The acquisition still faces scru...