Sometime this week we should be hearing from Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, The Rt Hon Karen Bradley MP about whether or not she has decided to refer 21st Century Fox’s bid to acquire the portion of Sky PLC it doesn’t already own to Ofcom on public interest grounds.
She has already said that she is ‘minded to’.
In the last week the case again the bid going ahead and for it to be referred to Ofcom has grown ever stronger.
Avaaz, a 44-million-person global campaign network have shared legal advice (.pdf) they got as part of their submission to DCMS about the merger, which amongst other things points out that the Secretary of State could make this referral on a new ground which would be set out by order under the power set out in ss42 and 58 (3) of the Enterprise Act 2002.
Sally Broughton Micova of the University of East Anglia has also written a piece for the LSE Media Project about how Ofcom should review Sky because they are also a large broadband supplier.
And on Monday the Ofcom gave an update on fit and proper assessment of Sky indicating, as reported in the FT, that such a test would be applied should Bradley refer the case to them…