Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said that its pending $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks is contingent on Comcast’s $67 billion deal to purchase Time Warner Cable, but the Charter CEO said his deal could help push the larger transaction through some murky regulatory waters.
Rutledge admitted that if the Comcast-TWC deal does not win approval, that would make the Bright House deal a no go. But he said that he is confident the larger transaction will win approval and said that by buying Bright House, Charter effectively lowers the attributable subscribers to the combined Comcast/TWC to about 27 million customers from the 29 million subscribers previously expected.
“We think the deal is likely to close and it is more likely to close because it solves the attribution problem for Comcast-TWC,” Rutledge said on a conference call with analysts discussing the deal. “It improves the assets under the control of Comcast.”
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