Not more repeats on the telly. Sky’s already got a channel-full. Tune into Gold and the political faves keep coming up. Yes, Minister — obviously. The Good Life, the MPs’ expenses sitcom. And even some lampoon on jockey Matt Hancock becoming culture secretary: Only Fools and Horses.
And still Britain’s politicians and regulators can’t get enough of another drama: Rupert Murdoch bidding for Sky. Round it keeps coming, much to the joy of Ed Miliband, the famous stonemason who popped up yesterday to declare: “Finally a regulator says ‘No’ to the Murdochs.” Well, not really, Ed. Whatever the ex-Labour leader may think, the latest regulatory verdict looks pretty much the same as the last one.
Except for one thing: this time the main action is off-screen. Since Mr Hancock’s predecessor, Karen Bradley, told the Competition and Markets Authority to have a squint at 21st Century Fox’s £11.7 billion bid for the 61 per cent of Sky it doesn’t already own, one crucial event has happened. Mr Murdoch, the co-executive chairman of Fox and chairman of The Times owner News Corp, has struck a $52.4 billion deal to sell most of Fox’s assets to Disney, including its 39 per cent Sky stake.
So, assuming the Disney deal goes ahead, CMA concerns that the Fox/Sky deal is “not in the public interest” are all a bit academic. Indeed, if Mr Murdoch really was so intent on buying the whole of Sky to exert “too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda”, why is he selling it to Disney? Moreover, as the CMA admits, should the Murdoch Family Trust be replaced with Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Pluto its media plurality concerns “would fall away”.
Still, the CMA can’t assume the Disney deal, with its own regulatory inquiry of up to 18 months, simply gets done. And, before that, it’s decision-time on Fox’s £10.75-a-share Sky bid. So the CMA had to produce a verdict, even if it may take effect only for a few months.
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And what has it provisionally decided? Well, just about the same as Ofcom in June — no big surprise, either, given the media regulator had to school the CMA in so many of the issues. Indeed, one of the four-strong CMA panel is said to not even own a TV — something the competition regulator would neither confirm or deny yesterday.
Anyway, in short the CMA found that despite News of the World phone hacking and sexual harassment claims at Fox News, there is no issue over Mr Murdoch’s “commitment to broadcasting standards”. The problem, as Ofcom also found, is control of Sky News: the same issue that cropped up in 2011 before phone hacking scuppered his earlier Sky bid.
Again, there are broadly the same three remedies. Mr Hancock could block the Sky/Fox deal, even though Disney may soon take the problem away. Or Fox could be forced to sell or spin off Sky’s loss-making news channel, potentially reducing media plurality because it may make it less financially secure. Or there could be “behavioural remedies”, at least until the Disney takeover.
The market thinks the third option most likely — the reason Sky shares rose 2 per cent to £10.26. In fact, unlike Mr Miliband, Citi analysts reckon the CMA findings suggest the Sky deal’s “almost done”. They see an “easy” way, too, for Fox to circumvent remedies: Sky selling its news channel early to Disney. Of course, in June Ms Bradley already had what now looks a decent remedy from Fox: five years funding for Sky News and an independent editorial board. But politicians are nothing if not addicted to repeats.
Tough at the top
Bold stuff from Inchcape. The car dealer’s just named Nigel Stein as its new chairman. Who he? The recently departed GKN boss whose record is now being pulled apart — thanks to Melrose’s £7.4 billion hostile bid for the car parts and aerospace group.
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Mr Stein, on the Inchcape board since October 2015, will succeed Ken Hanna in May. And it’s not just Melrose that’s now ripping into the “overly complex organisation without clear focus” he was running until December 31 —the one with its “history of missed targets and below-par shareholder returns”.
So, too, is the woman who replaced him, Anne Stevens: the non-exec thrust into the hot seat after GKN’s botched succession plan. Apart from a small IT company, Ms Stevens hasn’t run anything for eight years, whatever GKN’s attempts to talk up her non-exec roles at Lockheed Martin and Anglo American.
Yet that hasn’t stopped her instigating her Project Boost plan and declaring that GKN’s “profit margins and cash generation have been below expectations”. By the time the two sides have finished puffing up their own management credentials, how much of Mr Stein’s will be left?
Brought to book
Accountancy firm RSM Tenon went bust in 2013 after overstating its own profits — a delightful caper that landed its auditor PWC with a record £5.1 million fine from the Financial Reporting Council. So maybe it’s no big shock to find Tenon, rescued by Baker Tilly and renamed Arrandco Audit, with its own £700,000 FRC fine — as ex-auditor of Aim disaster Quindell. True, Quindell’s ex-boss Rob Terry couldn’t even tell the difference between buying and selling shares. But luckily the Serious Fraud Office is helping him with that.
Face facts
Here’s a Davos prediction from David Autor, economics prof at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “I would guess Facebook would be almost non-existent 20 years from now.” Yes, only economists go on forever.
