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Finance ·Time Warner Cable

How big is Charter’s deal for Time Warner Cable?

BYDan Primack
May 26, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC
The Time Warner Cable logo is displayed on the back of a van in New York
The Time Warner Cable logo is displayed on the back of a van in New York February 13, 2014. Comcast Corp's proposed $45.2 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc could face close scrutiny from U.S. antitrust regulators because of the deal's potential to reshape the country's pay TV and broadband markets. REUTERS/Joshua Lott (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY) - RTX18S33
Photograph by Joshua Lott — Reuters

If Charter Communications (CHTR) manages to acquire Time Warner Cable (TWC) for $78.4 billion, it would be the sixth-largest U.S. merger in history. It also would be the largest cable industry merger of all time, just edging out Comcast’s (CMCSA) 2001 purchase of AT&T Broadband.

That’s according to Thomson Reuters, which adds that the deal brings the year’s global M&A tally up to $1.6 trillion. That’s a 31% jump over last year’s total at the time, and the strongest year-to-date figure since 2007. U.S. deals are up 44% over 2014 year-to-date.

CaptureSource: Thomson Reuters

Nearly $150 billion of this year’s activity has come from the media and entertainment space, including $96.8 billion from cable deals. And those figures only are expected to rise if AT&T’s (T) $67.2 billion deal for DirecTV (DTV) closes in 2015, as it currently is listed by Thomson Reuters as a 2014 deal. Charter has said that it plans to close its Time Warner Cable purchase by year-end.

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