Someone pass the smelling salts. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday issued another rebuke to the Justice Department in its quest to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger and unanimously affirmed the trial judge’s ruling. As a legal matter this is a stone-cold knockout. Justice sued to enjoin the merger in November 2017, arguing it would increase the leverage of Time Warner networks in carriage-fee negotiations with other distributors. AT&T, which owns DirecTV, would supposedly suffer less pain if negotiations...

Source: Wall Street Journal February 27, 2019 00:00 UTC