 "An AT&T Logo is pictured on the side of a building in Pasadena, California.(Photo: Reuters")
Just a day after the Republican Party candidate in the US presidential elections, Donald Trump, opposed the AT&T’s proposed $85 billion deal to buy Time Warner Inc, Vermont Senator and Democratic Party leader, Bernie Sanders joined the similar call.
Sanders, on Sunday, joined the political opposition to the mega deal by demanding the Obama administration to kill it. He tweeted that:
The administration should kill the Time Warner/AT&T merger. This deal would mean higher prices and fewer choices for the American people. https://t.co/S8c4ldDqhi
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 23, 2016
The buy out of Time Warner Inc — a media and entertainment conglomerate which also owns media organisations like CNN — by AT&T — a telecommunications behemoth — at $85.4 billion is considered one of the largest in the world. AT&T agreed to pay 50 per cent of an amount in cash and the other half in stock, says the AT&T press release.
According to Reuters, the deal generated scepticism among both Democrats and Republicans on Sunday, making it more likely that regulators will closely scrutinise the effort to create a new telecommunications and media giant.
It added, the biggest deal of the year, announced just over two weeks before the November 8 US election, is a gamble on a victory for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a continuation of the status quo on anti-trust and regulatory enforcement.
In his Gettysburg speech — during which he also unveiled his 100-day action plan if he were the President — Trump, trailing Clinton in the polls, has said he would block the takeover. He described the deal as a danger to the democracy as it would lead to "too much concentration of power in the hands of very few".
