Shareholders Approve Massive Disney, Fox Merger

Disney’s quest for domination of the entertainment industry got a boost on Friday. The massive entertainment corporation got approval from shareholders to go through with its landmark purchase of 21st Century Fox’s media assets.

Investors from both companies held separate meetings where they voted on the deal. It was an important step towards what could be one of the biggest entertainment acquisitions in history. The $71 billion deal was approved by 99 percent of Disney investors who voted, per Bloomberg. The heads of both firms failed to show up.

Amusingly, one Disney investor apparently said the company overpaid by $10 billion or so. Still, after not even 10 minutes of voting, the deal was approved. The United States Department of Justice approved the deal back in June, with the only condition being that Disney sells Fox’s regional sports networks. There are 22 of those for several markets around the United States.

Disney still needs approval from the European Union and China, among other countries, for the deal to go through. Fox expects the deal to finalize before the middle of 2019.

Assuming Disney gets the necessary thumbs up from those other countries, its dominance over Hollywood will grow even more. Disney bought Marvel for a mere $4 billion in 2009 and has turned the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a profit machine. The same goes for “Star Wars,” which Disney bought for the same price in 2012.

Between those two behemoths and everything that will come with the acquisition of Fox (including other Marvel properties), Disney will control about half of domestic Hollywood market share, per CNN Money.

The only other snag here is that Disney needs to figure out what to do with Sky. Disney will get 39 percent of the European TV corporation by acquiring Fox but could save about $19 billion by giving it to someone else. Comcast, which was Disney’s only major competition in the Fox deal before bowing out, could still be in the mix for Sky. It has a $34 billion offer for Sky on the table, per Bloomberg.