AT&T CEO John Stankey told analysts Monday that the company was not worried about Congressional antitrust concerns over its deal to merge WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc.
In a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice this weekend, 30 members of Congress warned of potential harm to consumers and workers, including the exclusion of Black, Indigenous and Latino figures in media. The letter signees, which included U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, have urged the department to thoroughly investigate the proposed deal.
“Not to say that we won’t get into dialogue and have a constructive conversation for people to understand, but I think what’s been articulated in those letters is really unfounded,” Stankey said at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference 2021.
“I’ve seen nothing that’s gone on in the process at this point in time that’s out of pattern or out of skew and it’s going as expected. We continue to have really good and constructive discussions with folks as a result of that,” Stankey said.
“I believe the context of our discussion with regulators up to this point have centered around those issues, and we feel very good about the data we put on the table. It’s clearly indicated that there’s nothing unusual about this transaction.”
AT&T plans to share more about the structure of the proposed deal in the first quarter of 2022, Stankey said.
Dallas-based AT&T and Discovery announced in May their intention to merge the WarnerMedia and Discovery businesses in a transaction that would create one of Hollywood’s most formidable studios. As part of the proposed deal, AT&T would receive $43 billion, and its shareholders would own 71% of the new company’s stock while Discovery shareholders would own 29%.
