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Business professionals celebrate in an office, surrounded by screens displaying 'Disney Proposes $52.4 Billion Acquisition of Fox Assets' and company logos.

Business professionals celebrate in an office, surrounded by screens displaying 'Disney Proposes $52.4 Billion Acquisition of Fox Assets' and company logos.

On December 14, 2017, the Walt Disney Company announced its intent to acquire the motion picture, television production, cable entertainment, and direct broadcast satellite divisions of 21st Century Fox (the former News Corporation, which spun off its publishing assets in 2013), including 20th Century Fox and FX Networks, for $52.4 billion. The remainder of the company would form a so-called "New Fox", maintaining control of assets such as Fox's television network and broadcast stations (which Disney, already owning ABC, would be legally unable to own due to an FCC policy known as the "dual network rule", which prohibits mergers between the top broadcast networks), Fox News, the national operations of Fox Sports, and the 20th Century Fox studio lot, which would be leased to Disney for seven years. Fox's regional sports networks were also included in the sale, but were later divested by order of the Department of Justice, on the grounds that the Fox regional networks' combination with Disney's 80% ownership of ESPN would make Disney monopolize the cable sports market.[15][16][17][18][19] In May 2018, it was confirmed that Lachlan Murdoch, rather than James Murdoch, would take charge of the New Fox company.[4] In mid-2018, NBCUniversal's parent company Comcast instigated bidding wars over both the Fox assets Disney planned to purchase, and the British broadcaster Sky plc (a company that 21st Century Fox held a stake in, and was planning to acquire the remainder). In July 2018, Mehr sehen