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Comcast pays big to go international

Over the weekend, Comcast beat 21st Century Fox in an auction to acquire the British broadcaster Sky, with a $39 billion bid. It caps nearly two years of takeover drama, and the company’s trans-European reach gives Comcast a way to expand outside the U.S.

But did Comcast overpay for the privilege?

Sky shareholders certainly did well: They’ll get £17.28 a share, 61 percent more than Fox’s initial bid in 2016. “It’s going to be incredibly hard to justify having paid such a high price,” the analyst Craig Moffett told Bloomberg.

Here’s Andrew’s take on how Brian Roberts, the C.E.O. of Comcast, played the situation:

Mr. Robert’s maneuverings could one day prove to be a case study in tactical deal making. His move to buy most of Fox forced Disney to raise its bid for those assets so much that when it came time to compete for Sky, Disney had a hard time bidding against Comcast without overleveraging itself. Time will tell whether the Sky deal proves successful — but if scored simply on the dark arts of deal making, Mr. Roberts already won. We’ll see whether Disney ends up selling Fox’s stake in Sky to Comcast. That’s likely, or else Disney risks being a minority owner with little influence. There has also been speculation that Comcast could sell its stake in Hulu to Disney as part of a swap, but that makes little sense for now.

Disclosure: Andrew is an anchor on CNBC, part of Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit.