FT: Sky to confirm deal for Sky Europe on Friday.

FT reporting that BSkyB will announce a deal to acquire 21st Century Fox's 100 per cent holding of Sky Italia and its 57 per cent stake in Sky Deutschland as part of its full year results on Friday.

http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft?post=185552&siteedition=intl

Sky would then be obliged to make a take over offer for all of Sky Deutschland.

Combined company would have 19m subscribers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Interesting times in the sector with Fox eyeing Time Warner and Liberty Global expanding across Europe. Raises interesting questions about how Sky approach competition with BT in the short term as well.

Sounds like Sky think they have saturated the market in the UK, if european expansion is the next step...

We're Sky and we're reaching out to you.......................

oh dear dosent sound like good news to me, why do BSkyB want to dominate europe

It won't matter unless they can start buying rights on a pan-European scale, which they wouldn't be able to do without a future merger with Canal Plus, which I could see going down with the French government very badly if it were proposed. In reality the three companies will continue to operate much as they do now, particularly if Sky Deutschland retains its Frankfurt listing (should BSkyB fail in its attempt to take it private - I'm not sure what level of acceptances it needs in this case.).

Surely a Fox/Liberty Global deal would require a sell-off here since it would give 21st Century Fox full control of Virgin Media and substantial control of BSkyB?

I couldn't see Liberty buying Sky. It's core business in Europe is cable and as well as Virgin Media, UPC Ireland, UPC Austria, and whatever it's cable business in Germany is called these days would all pose competition problems. UPC/Liberty is essentially Sky's biggest competitor.

A Liberty buy out of ITV would be interesting, but they seem to be getting out of content with the sale of Chellomedia.

And therefore, it simply cannot be allowed to happen. It would be seriously bad news if Murdoch's Money Vultures acquired the company that currently owns Virgin Media. I very much doubt our competition regulators would allow it anyway.

Strange, it would also mean regaining a control in ITV.

ITV....i'd forgotten about ITV. BRILLIANT!

Isn't that what the post you're responding to is more or less saying would happen?