Charter Communications is close to an agreement to purchase Time Warner Cable for about $55bn, according to reports on Monday.
A deal between the two companies could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to Bloomberg, which said Charter was set to pay about $195 a share in cash and stock.
The deal would allow Charter to quadruple its cable subscribers and gain customers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. The merged company would probably become a rival to industry behemoth Comcast.
The deal is also set bring in Bright House Networks, the sixth-largest cable provider in the US. Charter’s chief executive, Tom Rutledge, will lead the merged company, according to the LA Times.
It is the second bid for Time Warner by Charter Communications, the fourth-largest US cable company. Early last year, a bid on the company was outmatched by an offer from Comcast.
But the deal to merge Time Warner and Comcast fell through in April. Had that merger been successful, the resulting company would have had up to 57% of the broadband internet market in the US.
The deal was announced in February 2014, but faced opposition from the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, which raised concerns that the merger would give the company “an unavoidable gatekeeper for internet-based services that rely on broadband connection to reach consumers”.
A merger between Charter Communications, Time Warner and Bright House Networks would also be subject to regulatory approval.
In July 2014, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox made an unsolicited bid of $80bn to take over Time Warner. Murdoch said his company withdrew the bid in August after Time Warner “refused to engage with us”.
