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 The friendly takeover comes as a surprise after months of public
pursuit of Time Warner Cable by smaller rival Charter Communications
Inc, and immediately raised questions as to whether it would pass
regulatory scrutiny. Comcast will pay $158.82 per share, which is roughly what Time
Warner Cable demanded from Charter. The combined company would divest 3 million subscribers, about a
quarter of Time Warner's 12 million customers. Together with
Comcast's 22 million video subscribers, the roughly 30 million total
would represent just under 30 percent of the U.S. pay television
video market.
 The new cable giant would tower over its closest video competitor,
DirecTV, which has about 20 million video customers. If successful, the deal will be the second time in little more than
a year that Comcast has helped reshape the U.S. media landscape
after its $17 billion acquisition of NBC Universal was completed in
2013.
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The proposed combination, which would give roughly 23 percent of the
merged company to Time Warner Cable shareholders, is subject to
regulatory approval and the two companies expect to close the deal
by the end of the year. (Additional reporting by Alina Selyukh;
editing by Soyoung Kim and
Edward Tobin)
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