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| US appeals $80bn AT&T-Time Warner deal | US appeals $80bn AT&T-Time Warner deal |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The US government has decided to appeal against a landmark court ruling that cleared the way for telecoms giant AT&T to buy Time Warner. | |
| The ruling was a significant defeat for the US Justice Department, which had argued the deal would lead to less competition and higher consumer prices. | The ruling was a significant defeat for the US Justice Department, which had argued the deal would lead to less competition and higher consumer prices. |
| A federal judge rejected those claims last month, allowing the takeover to go through without conditions. | |
| AT&T completed the $81bn (£60bn) deal shortly after. | |
| The company did not immediately comment on the DoJ move. | The company did not immediately comment on the DoJ move. |
| The deal combined AT&T's mobile, broadband and satellite television businesses with Time Warner's media assets that include the TV networks HBO and CNN. | |
| AT&T argued that it needed that scale to compete with rivals such as Netflix and Amazon. | |
| As a candidate for president, Donald Trump said he opposed the deal, say it would be "too much concentration of power in the hands of too few". | |
| The case had been closely followed as a bellwether for competition regulation in the US, where there is growing concern that a small number of companies dominate many sectors. | |
| The IMF highlighted the issue of "mega-firms" in its recent review of the US economy. | |
| Last month's approval encouraged companies that were considering their own acquisitions. | |
| Comcast started a bidding war with Disney for the entertainment assets of Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox in the days following the court ruling. |