Rupert Murdoch, Apple on Short List of Potential Time Warner Buyers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 2:04AM EST · Published Oct 22, 9:15AM EDT

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Rupert Murdoch, Apple on Short List of Potential Time Warner Buyers — © Wikimedia Commons

Rupert Murdoch already tried to buy Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) in July 2014, via his Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NASDAQ: FOXA), for over $80 a share. Time Warner said no. However, his previous attempt has to put him on a short list of companies that might make a bid now that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is close to a deal. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is another, based on media reports of conversations early in the year. AT&T may not walk away with Time Warner unchallenged.

The Murdoch offer pushed Time Warner’s shares to $88. They have traded as high as $94 this week. Some analysts believe the offer from AT&T may need to be near $110 a share. Skeptics believe that deal would be too much for even AT&T to take on. It was a stretch for Murdoch, but he is a renowned gambler and could return, particularly if he could sell of some divisions of the combined company to finance a transaction.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple talked to Time Warner:

From Apple’s end, executives under Chief Executive Tim Cook were involved in the earlier talks. Apple has pursued plans to build an online TV service and has begun creating original programming of its own. Before its most recent approach, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, brought up a potential combination in a meeting with Time Warner’s head of corporate strategy Olaf Olafsson last year, the people said, though the talks never went further than that. The Financial Times earlier reported last year’s approach.

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What other companies does that leave? On a buyout basis, only Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), AT&T’s arch rival. Its buyouts of AOL, and perhaps Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), show its appetite for content companies. Although, with the AOL and Yahoo deals, Verizon may have taken on too much

The only other options are true mergers, although the strategic reasons would be different from those who want to own content. A merger of two media companies would need to be based on “synergy” between divisions and cost cuts. The only likely candidate for this, other than 21st Century Fox, is Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), which matches Time Warner in the studio and cable TV programming areas.

The Time Warner buyout may become a competition.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.