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.
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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