The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division plans to review Comcast Corp.'s appointment of three directors at Hulu LLC, Multichannel News reported Oct. 3.
At a Senate Antitrust Committee hearing, antitrust chief Makan Delrahim said that while the DOJ could not extend the conditions set on Comcast as part of the approval for the NBCUniversal Media LLC deal, it will take action against any anticompetitive conduct by the company.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut raised concerns regarding the appointments of three directors and also said he had issues with the effectiveness of the conditions set as part of the NBCU deal approval.
The news comes as Comcast is raising $27 billion through an offering of floating-rate notes and fixed-rate notes to finance its acquisition of Sky PLC. Also, Comcast unit Comcast Bidco Ltd. struck a deal to buy 672,783,139 Sky shares from 21st Century Fox Inc. or its affiliates, representing about 39.12% of the issued ordinary share capital of Sky, at £17.28 per share.
Hulu's owners include Walt Disney Co., Fox, NBCU and AT&T Inc.'s WarnerMedia.