The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice have signaled they have no antitrust issues with the planned spinoff of Liberty Media's interests in Charter Communications into a new tracking stock, Liberty Broadband.
That came in a list of deals that are getting early termination of their Hart Scott Rodino antitrust reviews. Early termination of the review means that the reviewing agency -- either FTC or DOJ, though likely DOJ -- saw no reason to block or condition the deal.
Liberty two weeks ago set Nov. 4 as the date for completion of the spinoff.
" We believe the creation of the Liberty Broadband tracking stock and the concurrent rights offering will provide us greater flexibility to, among other things, support Charter in its expansion efforts," Liberty chairman John Malone said back in March.
Part of that planned expansion could come through the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger. Charter will benefit from Comcast's spinoff of some systems to make the deal more palatable at the FCC.
