Acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T

The acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T was announced on October 22, 2016, and was completed on June 14, 2018. Under the merger's agreements, AT&T would pay $85.4 billion to acquire ownership of Time Warner, assume the company's debts of $23.3 billion, and issue Time Warner shareholders $107.50 per share (roughly $53.75 in cash and AT&T stock). The cash-and-stock merger was valued at $108.7 billion. At the time of the merger's announcement, AT&T was the world's largest telecommunications company, and it recently acquired DirecTV for $67 billion, making it the biggest pay television distributor in the United States. AT&T defended these large purchases as being necessary to compete with Big Tech companies within the entertainment industry amidst growing concerns of media consolidation.

Early reactions to the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger were mostly negative, with many advocacy groups and regulating agencies voicing criticism. Common concerns were that the transaction would give AT&T too much concentration in content distribution and allow it to raise subscription fees or withhold content from competitors. These concerns led the U.S. Department of Justice to file an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T on November 20, 2017, to block the merger. The dispute marked the first federal litigation into a vertical merger in nearly 40 years and it was often called the "antitrust trial of the century." The court trial lasted for six weeks from March to June 2018, and it was overseen by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon.

On June 12, 2018, Leon ruled in AT&T’s favor, and the merger closed two days later. Time Warner was then reorganized as a privately-owned AT&T subsidiary and renamed to WarnerMedia, LLC. The DOJ appealed to the U.S. Circuit Courts in July 2018 to continue its lawsuit but later ended the effort after the courts upheld Leon’s ruling in February 2019. Within two years, AT&T began unwinding its investments into entertainment to pay down its heavy debt load. On May 17, 2021, AT&T reached an agreement with Discovery, Inc., to transfer control of WarnerMedia. Through the deal, WarnerMedia was spun off and merged with Discovery through a Reverse Morris Trust, forming Warner Bros. Discovery on April 8, 2022.