Comcast walks away from Disney bid

[Force Flow]

Comcast said Wednesday that it has withdrawn its multibillion-dollar bid to buy Walt Disney after investors and Disney executives failed to embrace the acquisition. "I'm very comfortable with our decision to withdraw the Disney offer, even though that was not our original hope going into the deal," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in a conference call with investors. "The size of the transaction put so much of our company resources into the deal that some shareholders believed this was a sign that we were losing confidence in the cable business, which we have not." Comcast announced its bid for Disney in February, proposing a deal that would have created one of the largest media and distribution companies in the world. The deal at the time was valued at $66 billion, including the assumption of $12 billion in Disney debt. After the Disney offer was first announced, Roberts said publicly that the content Comcast would gain through the merger would power the cable giant's next generation of services, such as video on demand, high-definition TV and streaming media. Yet even at that point, Roberts indicated that he did not view the Disney acquisition as critical to Comcast's business. Rather, he had thought the deal would allow Comcast to innovate its product portfolio faster and make the two companies stronger, he said.

~From news.com

http://news.com.com/2100-1035_3-5201532.html

[SonicVanguard]

Good. For the largest cable provider to own one of if not the largest content provider in United Stated broadcast media was (and still could be) a huge problem waiting to happen.

I will agree Eisner needs to step down, but Comcast in the driver seat would have been a nightmare to people on other cable systems and satellite systems.

Dave.