21st Century Fox Announces Disney's Acquisition Is Complete

CBR

By Nicole Sobon

Published Mar 19, 2019

21st Century Fox has announced the completion of distribution as Disney is set to take over the company as of 12:02 AM on Wednesday, March 20.

21st Century Fox has officially announced the completion of the distribution ahead of Disney officially taking over the company tomorrow.

The company confirmed it finished issuing all outstanding shares of Fox Corporation common stock to 21CF stockholders as of today. 21CF and FOX are now each a standalone, publicly traded company, wit 21CF set to be acquired by The Walt Disney Company as of 12:02 AM, Wednesday, March 20.

Disney, of course, first entered talks to acquire 21st Century Fox in December 2017. However, the company faced some challenges when Comcast tried to outbid it, which led to Disney upping it's bid to an astounding $71.3 billion. As a closing date for the deal was announced earlier this month, Disney gave 21st Century Fox shareholders the option to choose between cash and stock, with the company reporting 51.57 percent chose cash, while the others -- 36.65 percent -- chose stock in Disney.

It's expected that Disney will officially announce the acquisition of 21st Century Fox tomorrow, once the deal is complete, much like what Marvel did following a deal between it and Sony to share Spider-Man on the big screen in 2015.

As the deal is set to come into effect tomorrow, Disney will regain the rights to the many Marvel characters previously owned by Fox, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Disney CEO Bob Iger has previously teased there is a future for Deadpool with Disney, while Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has played coy regarding the use of Fox characters, confirming he has no plans to use them within the next six months.

(via 21st Century Fox)