Unrivaled: Red Wings v Avalanche

AT&T first announced its cash-and-stock acquisition of Time Warner on October 22, 2016. As part of their definitive agreement, AT&T would acquire Time Warner for $85.4 billion and assume the company's debt obligations for $23.3 billion, corresponding to a total amount of the transaction of $108.7 billion. Time Warner shareholders were issued up to $101.73 per share by AT&T. The deal between the two companies was structured as a tax-free vertical merger. At the time of the merger's announcement, AT&T was the world's largest telecommunications company, and the biggest pay TV distributor in the United States after completing its purchase of DirecTV. Wanting to diversify into entertainment, AT&T began considering several M&A deals before finalizing its agreement with Time Warner. To finance the transaction, AT&T signed a $40 billion unsecured bridge loan with Bank of America and JPMorgan. Early reactions to the proposed deal were mostly negative, as many advocacy groups, regulatory agencies, and politicians voiced concerns about the merger. Criticism centered on the level of market concentration AT&T would gain and whether it would raise subscription fees or withhold content from competitors. This led the Justice Department to sue AT&T on November 20, 2017, in what would become the first federal attempt to break apart a vertical merger in nearly 40 years. United States V. AT&T was often described as the "Antitrust Trial of the Century" and lasted for six weeks from March to June 2018. The U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon oversaw the trial and ruled on June 12, 2018, that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had failed to provide substantial evidence of how the merger would impact consumers. The merger closed on June 14, 2018, with Time Warner being privately reorganized into AT&T as WarnerMedia, LLC. The DOJ continued its legal battle with AT&T until 2019, when the Circuit Courts upheld Judge Leon's ruling. AT&T's involvement with entertainment only lasted a few years, as it began unwinding its participating interests in media to bring down debt. By May 17, 2021, an agreement was reached with Discovery, Inc. to spin off WarnerMedia and have it merged to form Warner Bros. Discovery through a Reverse Morris Trust, with the transaction closing on April 8, 2022.