Bell Atlantic's pact to acquire TCI collapses amid dispute over price; cable rate cut ordered by FCC was final straw

Bell Atlantic Corp announces on Feb 23, 1994 that it is abandoning plans to acquire Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) due to the Federal Communications Commission's decision to require cable television service providers to reduce their rates. Tele-Communications Inc also releases a statement blaming the FCC for scuttling the deal, and says it will now have to cut its 1994 capital investment plans in half. Yet insiders reveal that intense and unrelenting haggling over the exact price Bell Atlantic would pay TCI for its assets actually doomed the match. The original acquisition agreement called for Bell Atlantic to swap $11.8 billion in stock for TCI's cable-television systems and another $20 billion for all its other assets, such as its equity in cable program providers the Cable News Network and TNT. Bell's stock, valued at $67.625 a share when the acquisition was unveiled, has since fallen below $54, the price it guaranteed to TCI in making the deal.