AT&T Vows to Take Time Warner Case to Supreme Court If Necessary

(Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc., facing a renewed Justice Department attack on its purchase of Time Warner Inc., said it would take the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said he expected the government to appeal the judge’s decision that allowed his company to acquire Time Warner last month. The move “doesn’t change anything -- the merger is closed,” he told reporters at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

“We’ll take it to the Supreme Court if that’s where it goes, but we don’t anticipate that,” Stephenson said.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division filed a one-sentence notice of appeal Thursday in federal court in Washington. AT&T completed the Time Warner transaction on June 14, two days after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the $85 billion merger could proceed. The decision capped a lengthy legal battle over whether the telecom giant should be allowed to acquire a global media operation.

“The judge did -- we thought -- a very fact-based, thoughtful, thorough order,” said Stephenson, 58. “We’re about executing right now.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net;Alex Barinka in San Francisco at abarinka2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net

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