Sonos has acquired Mayht, a Dutch startup best known for co-creating a Bluetooth speaker powered by light. Mayht specializes in an audio technology called Heartmotion. The company claims to have reinvented “the core of speaker driver” to allow for spea…
WarnerMedia finalizes $43 billion merger with Discovery
WarnerMedia and Discovery have completed their merger. Warner Bros. Discovery, as the new entity is called, will eventually combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming service. The blend of entertainment and reality programming could help Warner Bros. Discovery better compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney+. In the meantime, the company will likely offer a bundle of the two services. WarnerMedia recently launched another streaming service in CNN+.
Not long before the merger closed, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar announced his departure. Kilar, who started running the company in May 2020, was behind the controversialplan to release all 2021 Warner Bros. movies on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The move seemed to have paid off, as HBO Max and HBO had 73.8 million subscribers combined at the end of 2021.
As if the departures of Kilar and several other WarnerMedia executives didn’t make things clear enough, Warner Bros. Discovery will have a new leadership structure. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is running the company.
The merger is the latest in several major media consolidation moves in recent years. Amazon sealed its $8.45 billion purchase of MGM only last month. Disney spent $71.3 billion to snap up most of 21st Century Fox a few years back, while Microsoft agreed a $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard, which is expected to close by June 2023.
AT&T announced last year it was spinning off WarnerMedia in a $43 billion deal that would combine it with Discovery. Now that the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted, the deal is done and AT&T is more or less out of the content business.
Amazon completes its $8.45 billion takeover of MGM
The James Bond, Rocky and RoboCop movies are now owned or co-owned by Amazon. The company has closed its $8.45 billion takeover of storied movie and TV studio MGM.
European Union antitrust regulators unconditionally approved the deal this week. They determined there wasn’t a great deal of overlap between the two companies, and that “MGM’s content cannot be considered as must-have” compared with other studios.
Amazon had reportedly given the Federal Trade Commission, which was said to have been reviewing the buyout, a deadline of mid-March to challenge or approve the acquisition. If the agency didn’t file a legal challenge by then, Amazon would have been free to move forward with the purchase.
MGM “will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios’ work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers,” Amazon said in a press release. The studio has more than 4,000 films and 17,000 episodes of TV to its name, along with 180 Oscars and 100 Emmy Awards. MGM movies include classics such as Thelma & Louise, The Silence of the Lambs, The Magnificent Seven and Raging Bull.
Amazon will still release James Bond movies in theaters instead of hanging onto them as Prime Video exclusives. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Bond reading by the pool with a Kindle in his next outing, as long as franchise co-owner Eon Productions gives the OK for that product placement.
It’s likely that the vast majority of MGM movies and TV shows will wind up on Prime Video following theatrical runs and after agreements with other streaming platforms expire.
Update 3/17 12:03PM ET: Noting that Amazon co-owns the James Bond franchise rather than owning it outright.
Congressional bills would ban tech mergers over $5 billion
Senator Elizabeth Warren has long made clear that she’s no fan of Big Tech, and her latest legislation proves it. She and House Representative Mondaire Jones have introduced legislation in their respective congressional chambers that would effectively ban large technology mergers. The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act (PAMA) would make it illegal to pursue “prohibited mergers,” including those worth more than $5 billion or which provide market shares beyond 25 percent for employers and 33 percent for sellers.
The bills would also give antitrust regulators more power to halt and review mergers. They would have authority to reject mergers outright, without requiring court orders. They would likewise bar mergers from companies with track records of antitrust violations or other instances of “corporate crime” in the past decade. Officials would have to gauge the impact of these acquisition on labor forces, and wouldn’t be allowed to negotiate with the companies to secure “remedies” for clearing mergers.
Crucially, PAMA would formalize procedures for reviewing past mergers and breaking up “harmful deals” that allegedly hurt competition. The Federal Trade Commission has signalled a willingness to split up tech giants like Meta despite approving mergers years earlier. PAMA might make it easier to unwind those acquisitions and force brands like Instagram and WhatsApp to operate as separate businesses.
The act isn’t strictly focused on tech, but Warren made clear that industry was a target. She cautioned the FTC on Amazon’s proposed buyout of MGM Studios, and challenged Lockheed Martin’s since-abandoned attempt to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.
If it becomes law, PAMA would ban the Amazon-MGM union (worth over $8.4 billion), Microsoft’s Activision deal ($68.7 billion) and relatively modest acquisitions like Google’s planned buyout of Mandiant ($5.4 billion). Tech firms would largely have to focus on acquiring ‘small’ companies, and would largely have to forego deals meant to expand market share or otherwise cement dominance in a given market.
However, there are obstacles that might prevent PAMA from reaching President Biden’s desk. Both the Senate and House bills have no Republican cosponsors — they’re either Democrats or left-leaning independents like Senator Bernie Sanders. That’s enough to clear the House, but the Senate bill could fail if it doesn’t obtain total support from sitting Democrats. As such, this may represent more of a declaration of Democrats’ intentions than a fundamental change in regulatory policies.
Amazon wins EU approval for its $8.45 billion purchase of MGM
European Union officials have unconditionally rubber stamped Amazon’s $8.45 billion bid to buy famed movie and TV studio MGM. The European Commission’s antitrust regulators determined there was limited overlap between the companies and said the merger wouldn’t severely reduce competition in the theatrical film and audio-visual content markets.
“The Commission found that MGM’s upstream activities as a producer and licensor of AV content are limited compared to other market players’ activities; MGM’s content cannot be considered as must-have; and a wide variety of alternative content exists,” the EC said. It noted MGM’s movies account for a limited share of box office revenue in the European Economic Area and that “overall MGM is not among the top production studios, despite its rights over successful film franchises such as James Bond.”
Amazon still requires the green light from the Federal Trade Commission before it can close the deal, which was announced last May. Recent reports suggested the FTC was planning to challenge the merger with an antitrust lawsuit. However, that requires a majority vote by commissioners.
The FTC currently has two Democrat and two Republican commissioners. The Information reported that while they have reached a bipartisan consensus on some issues, a vote on an Amazon-MGM suit could be split along party lines. The Senate has yet to vote on Alvaro Bedoya’s nomination to the commission.
In any case, the deadline for a decision on the proposed MGM buyout is said to be fast approaching, reportedly sometime in mid-March. If the FTC doesn’t mount a legal challenge by then, Amazon could be free to proceed with the merger.
Google is buying cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion
Google has todayannounced that it has signed an agreement to buy Mandiant, a notable cybersecurity company, for $5.4 billion. The unit, once acquired, will be folded into Google’s Cloud team to ensure that it can offer an “end-to-end security operations suite” for its business customers. Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia says that the deal will enable “organizations [to] effectively, efficiently and continuously manage and configure their complex mix of security products.” Google’s cloud platform is used by a number of major companies, and an outage towards the end of 2021 briefly knocked out Spotify, Snapchat, Etsy and Discord, amongst others.
Mandiant isn’t likely to be a name on everyone’s lips, but it’s one of those companies who gets called in whenever bad things go down. It discovered the SolarWinds hack, and it was hired by Equifax to look into its security practices after its massive security snafu in 2017, and T-Mobile entered into partnership with the company after its 2021 breach. It also works with major banks and governments to work on high-profile attacks involving state actors. Mandiant was previously a part of FireEye after being acquired in 2013, but the company was spun back out last year.
The news comes just a month after Bloomberg reported that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring the company. It said that any deal would enable its new buyer to offer “unparalleled cybersecurity knowledge,” although Microsoft — obviously — subsequently pulled out of negotiations. But Google clearly feels that the deal is worth it, and is the second most expensive purchase the company has ever made, after its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola.
Microsoft completes its $19.7 billion purchase of voice-tech company Nuance
Microsoft has closed its $19.7 billion takeover of speech-tech company Nuance Communications. It announced the acquisition last April and cleared the final regulatory barrier this week when the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority signed off on the d…