AT&T (T) is close to announcing a deal to acquire Time Warner (TWX) , a roughly $85 billion transaction that would create the world's largest entertainment company and reorder the U.S. media industry.
The deal could be made public in the coming days, according to a report from Reuters.
The deal would come just two years after AT&T paid $48.5 billion to acquire DirecTV, the satellite-TV provider that has been at the center of the company's efforts to offset a sluggish, though sprawling, telecom business.
AT&T was prepared to pay $110 per share for Time Warner, one of the world's largest media conglomerate and which includes the Warner Bros. movie studio in Los Angeles, the Turner networks led by TBS and CNN in Atlanta, and a headquarters in New York where HBO is based. The deal would be structured in both cash and stock, valued at a 23% premium to its Friday closing price.
The deal reflects AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson's desire to own content that can be featured on the company's wireless network as well as through DirecTV, which plans to launch an online multichannel streaming service later this year. AT&T's aggressive move to buy Time Warner follows Comcast's (CMCSA) acquisition in recent years of NBCUniversal as well as Verizon's (VZ) foray into content through the purchase of Yahoo! this year and AOL in 2015.
Like Rupert Murdoch, who failed to acquire Time Warner two years ago, Stevenson is said to covet HBO, the premium pay-TV service that launched its own standalone streaming platform last year with great success. AT&T will also control sports rights to the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament as well as the Cartoon Network, TNT and CNN, which has broken its own record this year for ratings and revenue.
