Description
Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (as of 2018), with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019. The company is primarily involved in satellite television, producing and broadcasting. The current CEO is Dana Strong.
Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc.
Prior to November 2018, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox owned a 39.14% controlling stake in the company; on 9 December 2016, following a previous attempt under News Corporation that was affected by the News International phone hacking scandal, 21st Century Fox announced that it had agreed to buy the remainder of Sky, pending government approval. However, after a bidding war that included the Walt Disney Company (which was, in turn, acquiring most of 21st Century Fox's assets), US media and telecoms conglomerate Comcast acquired the entirety of Sky in 2018 for £17.28 per share. NBCUniversal, which is Sky Group's sister company, is also a division of Comcast.
Before the acquisition by Comcast, Sky was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of approximately £18.75 billion (€26.76 billion) as of 2018.
