AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has dismissed as “speculation” a Bloomberg report that claimed AT&T would reorganize as part of its merger with Time Warner.
Stephenson’s response was filed by CNBC early Friday morning, just a few hours after Bloomberg reported AT&T was planning to restructure to accommodate Time Warner.
The latter outlet indicates AT&T is planning to alter Stephenson’s title from CEO to Executive Chairman and appoint twin CEOS beneath him who would separately manage AT&T’s telecommunications and media arms.
Bloomberg’s sources say current entertainment head John Stankey would shift to CEO of the media business, while present Chief Strategy Officer and Group President of AT&T Technology and Operations would oversee the telecommunications side of the house. DirecTV would move under the company’s telecom umbrella, the report adds.
The move is reportedly intended to address regulatory concerns related to the potential for AT&T to show favoritism toward the content it would own through Time Warner. Bloomberg’s report comes just one day after Reuters noted seven consumer advocacy groups sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging him to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal.
Before Stephenson issued his response Friday morning, an AT&T spokesman told Bloomberg that integration plans remain undecided and are still being discussed by Stephenson and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.
Despite Stephenson’s dismissal of the report, Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche says the suggested tag-team structure makes sense.
“Given the dynamic changes expected to come in the [AT&T] model post the close of the [Time Warner] deal as it transitions to an integrated communications company (with ownership of distribution AND content), it will be interfacing with many different consumer bases. As a result, such a structure makes sense to us as [AT&T] integrates this asset in the first few years,” she writes in a Friday note.
Filed Under: Industry regulations