Disney eyes AT&T Broadband

NEW YORK - Walt Disney is to raise as much as $7.5bn (£5.1bn) through a debt and shares issue, fuelling speculation that it is to make a bid for AT&T Broadband, which was put up for sale by the US telecoms giant last month.

AT&T Broadband is one of the US's biggest cable operators with 14m subscribers. Last month, parent AT&T rejected a $58m (£39.9m) hostile bid for the division from rival cable firm ComCast, protesting that the bid "did not reflect the value of the business".



Walt Disney is understood to have held talks with Microsoft about a possible joint bid for the company. Microsoft is believed to want to prevent AOL Time Warner from buying the company.



AOL Time Warner, which already owns one US cable network with 12.7m customers, entered into talks with AT&T at the end of last month.



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