The saga of Disney’s pursuits of the 21st Century Fox assets continues as the House of Mouse recently distributed pamphlets to their shareholders detailing an upcoming shareholder vote regarding the potential acquisition.
A Disney shareholder recently took to Reddit to post the first page of an apparent merger proposal document. As detailed in the opening paragraph of the document, should the shareholders agree to the purchase, the current Disney company — as well as the 21st Century Fox assets — will become wholly owned subsidiaries a new entity called The Walt Disney Company.
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The document then goes on to detail which assets aren’t included in the purchase. The merger proposal states that a new Fox company will be formed to retain ownership of several Fox channels including Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Sports, and the wide array of sports-related channels including FS1, FS2, and the Big Ten Network.
The proposal — or the first page of it, at least — can be seen in its entirety below, complete with enough legalese and court room buzz words to make any lawyer happy.
We’re Disney shareholders and we just got this giant pamphlet about the proposed merger with Fox. from r/marvelstudios
This journey originally kicked off last year as Disney offered $52 billion in stock options to purchase various Fox assets, including the Fox movie studio and in turn, the Marvel-based characters the company still owned live-action rights to.
After a federal judge sided with AT&T and Warner Brothers in a lawsuit levied by the Department of Justice, fellow telecom giant Comcast through their hat in the ring, offering Fox an all-cash bid worth $65 billing, causing Disney to quickly respond with an offer of $71.3 billion, consisting of both cash and stock.
That bid is the one currently on the table, having been accepted by Fox.
As of late June, Fox had scheduled a shareholders vote to approve the sell on their end on July 27. Reports have since come out saying that Disney had already received approval from the Department of Justice on the merger, clearing the biggest hurdle the companies were set to face in the process.
The approval from the DOJ came with a catch: Disney can’t purchase Fox’s sports assets. That’s not a move that’s sure to bother the House of Mouse, which owns ESPN and it’s affiliated networks. The DOJ released a statement in regards to the merger, which can be read below.
“American consumers have benefitted from head-to-head competition between Disney and Fox’s cable sports programming that ultimately has prevented cable television subscription prices from rising even higher,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Today’s settlement will ensure that sports programming competition is preserved in the local markets where Disney and Fox compete for cable and satellite distribution.”
Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for the latest news on the impending Disney/Fox merger. What are your thoughts on the merger? Have you been keeping a close eye on it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
