AT&T-Time Warner deal: The Indian Matchmaker at a Global Wedding

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posted on 8 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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The stock and cash deal expected to transform the wireless carrier into a media giant is valued at USD 108.7 billion including debt.

In what could be one of the largest global consolidation deals in the telecom-media space, AT&T Inc. has reached an agreement to buy Time Warner Inc. for USD 85.4 billion. But when a deal this size is struck, one question that pops up is about the people – bankers, other financial advisors and lawyers - who helped shape it up.

In what could be one of the largest global consolidation deals in the telecom-media space, AT&T Inc. has reached an agreement to buy Time Warner Inc. for USD 85.4 billion. The stock and cash deal expected to transform the wireless carrier into a media giant is valued at USD 108.7 billion including debt.

But when a deal this size is struck, one question that pops up is about the people – bankers, other financial advisors and lawyers - who helped shape it up. For AT&T, like it's earlier near-USD 50-billion acquisition of DirecTV, Perella Weinberg Partners helped seal the deal. For Time Warner, it was Ketan Mehta and his team at Allen & Company (long time advisers to media companies).

The 43-year old US-born Mehta is a graduate of the New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business and has nearly 23 years of investment banking experience. He is also on the board of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and has served as Director at erstwhile Credit Suisse First Boston and Global Head of Citigroup’s technology, media and telecom practices at Citi before Allen & Company roped him in a year ago. At Citi, Mehta helped craft its complicated sale of British music company EMI Group and Time Warner Cable’s deal with Comcast.

Interestingly, Mehta was among other Citigroup bankers who helped defend Time Warner from an unwanted USD 80-billion takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. Allen & Company also featured in the list of advisers that counseled Time Warner Cable in its sale to peer cable operator Charter Communications and has partially to its credit some big-ticket deals having advised eBay on its USD 47-billion PayPal spin-off, Facebook on its USD 19 billion WhatsApp acquisition and LinkedIn on its USD 26.2 billion sale to Microsoft.

First published on Moneycontrol.com