Sky Group

Sky plc is a pan-European, British media and telecommunications company headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. Sky is Europe's biggest and leading media company and largest pay-TV broadcaster, with 21 million subscribers and 30,000 employees as of 2015.

Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital subscription television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc. Sky is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £18.75 billion (€26.76 billion) as of 2015.

Prior to 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 it had agreed to buy the remainder of Sky, pending government approval. As of July 2017, it has been subject to government review. The Walt Disney Company announced in December 2017 that it would, in turn, acquire 21st Century Fox, including the Sky stake, but Comcast made its own counter-offers to acquire Sky instead of Fox. Comcast ultimately won a blind auction ordered by the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers, and subsequently bought 36% stake in Sky and other stakes that previously owned by Fox and the full acquisition will be expected on October 2018.