America’s second cable behemoth has just been born

Charter Communications Inc. agreed to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for about $55 billion in cash and stock, snapping up the cable provider after getting last-minute competition from French billionaire Patrick Drahi. Charter will pay $195.71 a share — 14 percent above Time Warner Cable’s May 22 close — with $100 in cash and the remainder in its own stock, according to a statement Tuesday. Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter has previously agreed to buy, will also be merged into the combined entity. Charter, the fourth-biggest U.S. cable company, is clinching a deal with No. 2 Time Warner Cable after its early 2014 bid was rejected and Comcast Corp. jumped in with a competing offer. Charter got another shot when regulatory scrutiny caused the Comcast deal to fall apart in April and then faced competition last week from Drahi’s Altice SA, which also held merger talks with Time Warner Cable. “The idea that Time Warner Cable and Charter are merging isn’t a surprise, but the price raises some eyebrows,” Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson in New York, said May 24 after Bloomberg News reported a deal was near. “Altice undoubtedly contributed to Charter having to pay such a steep price to close the deal.”