Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox on Thursday sealed a $14.8-billion cash deal to take control of pan-European pay-TV giant Sky and create a global entertainment titan.
The Murdoch-controlled Fox group said in a statement that it has reached a formal agreement to buy the 61-percent stake in Sky that it does not already own.
The deal comes five years after the Australian-born media mogul failed to clinch a takeover after a notorious phone-hacking scandal at his newspaper empire.
“The strategic rationale for this combination is clear,” 21st Century Fox said in a statement issued in New York.
“It creates a global leader in content creation and distribution, enhances our sports and entertainment scale, and gives us unique and leading direct-to-consumer capabilities and technologies. It adds the strength of the Sky brand to our portfolio, including the Fox, National Geographic and Star brands,” the statement added.
21st Century Fox already owns a 39.1 percent stake in Sky, whose five main markets are Austria, Britain, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
“The enhanced capabilities of the combined company will be underpinned by a more geographically diverse and stable revenue base,” the company said. 21st Century Fox is one of the world’s largest entertainment companies, with a vast portfolio of cable, broadcast, film, pay TV and satellite assets across six continents.
