Buying eyes: Charter Communications is buying Time Warner Cable for $55.33 billion, creating one of the largest TV and Internet providers in the U.S. The Associated Press reports the deal comes a month after Comcast, the country’s largest cable provider and owner of NBCUniversal, walked away from a $45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable after intense pressure from regulators. Time Warner Cable had chosen the Comcast deal and rejected a $38 billion hostile offer from Charter in early 2014. Charter announced the deal this morning, and also says it will buy Bright House Networks, a smaller cable provider, for $10.4 billion. Charter, combined with Time Warner Cable and Bright House, will have nearly 24 million customers, compared with Comcast’s 27.2 million. AT&T’s pending deal with DirecTV would give it 26.4 million TV customers and 16.1 million Internet customers. Read the full story.
The game has changed: Mexico approved 19 companies and seven groups to bid on 14 shallow-water exploration blocks as the country prepares to allow private producers to drill in its waters for the first time since 1938. As Bloomberg reports, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. are among the companies that Mexico’s oil regulator, known as CNH, cleared to develop an estimated 80,000 daily crude barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, Commissioner Juan Carlos Zepeda says. Some 34 companies applied to pre-qualify for the July 15 auction. Mexico forecasts that the opening of the energy industry will bring in $62.5 billion in private investment by 2018 and increase its annual oil output by 500,000 barrels a day in that time. Shell and Petrobras began the process of pre-qualification but ultimately decided to stop and won’t participate as bidders in this first phase of the first round. Read the full story.
By the numbers: If you’re a person that looks at probabilities when it comes to your stock market investments, your odds for making money in June aren’t that great, history shows. As USA Today reports, when looking at the performance of the Dow Jones industrial average in all 12 months—going back 20, 50 and even 100 years—June is the only month in which the Dow was up less than half the time, according to data supplied by Bespoke Investment Group. The Dow also has posted negative average returns in June in the past 20- and 50-year periods. Over the past 50 years, the Dow has finished out June higher than when it started just 46% of the time. Over the past 20 years the Dow’s success rate dips even more, to just 45%—the worst-performing month of all since 1995. Read the full story.
