London: 21st Century Fox Inc. agreed to acquire Sky Plc for £11.7 billion (Dh53.34 billion; $14.6 billion), in Rupert Murdoch’s second run at Europe’s dominant pay-TV company, as the media billionaire seeks to consolidate his television empire across two continents.

Fox, which already holds a 39 per cent stake in London-based Sky, will pay £10.75 a share for the rest, according to a statement Thursday. That represents a premium of 36 per cent over Sky’s closing price on December 8, the day before the companies disclosed a preliminary offer. Murdoch is returning after a previous bid was thwarted in 2011 over a phone-hacking scandal at his newspapers.

The deal gives Fox a distribution platform to complement its film studio and cable channels like FX and National Geographic. Sky provides satellite-TV service to 21.8 million customers across the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria, and has been adding exclusive entertainment and original content to its core sports offerings while expanding into broadband and mobile service.

“The combined company will be a global creative and consumer powerhouse,” Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman of Fox and Rupert Murdoch’s son, said on a conference call.

For the Murdochs, the timing of the deal is right: Momentum behind US stocks continues to build as traders bet that President-elect Donald Trump will follow through on promises to cut regulations and reduce taxes, helping to drive earnings growth. In the UK, the pound has weakened against the dollar after the Brexit vote, which makes the acquisition cheaper for New York-based Fox.

Murdoch’s Sky bid follows AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion deal earlier this year to acquire Time Warner Inc., owner of HBO, CNN and Warner Bros., as traditional media push for scale to combat online video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Both deals would establish new beachheads for the companies, combining the delivery of content with the content itself.

Sky shares have traded below the offer price, first disclosed on December 9, as investors weigh regulatory and political risks to the deal. They declined 0.2 per cent to 981.50 pence at 2.49pm in London.

“There are a number of investors who feel that politics may get involved and this might not go through or get delayed,” said Stephane Beyazian, an analyst at Raymond James. “I would not expect a government with Brexit already on its plate to start pushing hard on this.”

The UK government can ask media regulator Ofcom to check whether the merger might harm plurality in the country’s media. Murdoch may be counting on changes to the media landscape and UK politics to clear the way. Unlike when Murdoch’s News Corp. bid for Sky in 2010, Fox doesn’t own any UK newspapers and the rise of digital outlets may also work in the bid’s favour, as people rely less on TV, radio and print publications to get their news.

Fox said it expects Sky News to maintain “its excellent record of compliance with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code.” The company pledged to keep Sky’s headquarters in London and complete a £1 billion investment in the campus.

“We do think this passes regulatory muster,” James Murdoch, Fox’s chief executive officer, said on the conference call. Murdoch said he expects “no meaningful concessions” will need to be made, as the deal is reviewed by the European Union over competition and potentially by regulators in the UK

The deal includes a £200 million break-up fee that would be made to Sky if the transaction doesn’t go through. The companies expect to complete the deal in 2017.

Fox may need to address resistance from some Sky shareholders pushing a bigger payout than the offer, which matches a price Sky’s shares reached in February. The stock had slumped this year amid concerns about the rising cost of sports rights, competition from digital rivals such as Netflix Inc. and scepticism about Sky’s ability to deliver double-digit revenue growth in Germany.

While consolidating Sky is expected to save Fox in areas like taxes, some analysts have questioned the deal’s strategic value.

“We scratch our heads in terms of what a distribution company headquartered in the UK does for a global content company headquartered in the US over the long term,” Wells Fargo analysts led by Marci Ryvicker wrote in a Dec. 12 research note. “We’re not buyin’ it.”

Changing Sky

Sky has been seeking to stave off competition from phone and cable companies, in part by securing rights to exclusive programming such as HBO shows, and spending on original dramas like “Fortitude.”

The company has paid record sums to air Premier League matches and keep ahead of BT Group Plc, which also broadcasts some of the league’s games.

To diversify further, Sky has expanded into broadband, and it’s starting a mobile phone service, an attempt to crack a £15.2 billion market in the UK

Murdoch has long made clear his desire to own all of Sky. He was derailed in his 2010 attempt to buy out other shareholders for £7.8 billion, after revelations that two of his newspapers hacked into the mobile phones of celebrities and politicians.

Fox’s latest approach has spurred fresh complaints over corporate governance at Sky, where Murdoch’s son James returned as chairman this year. Fox CEO James Murdoch, 44, was Sky’s CEO from 2003 to 2007.

“It would have been preferable to have an independent chairman,” Piers Hillier, chief investment officer at Royal London, a Sky shareholder, said in a December 12 statement. The creation of an independent board committee to evaluate the bid “addresses some of the conflicts of interest, however it doesn’t go far enough.”