Marriott’s purchase of Starwood Hotels & Resorts turned out to be more costly than expected: in a recent FCC consent decree, Marriott agreed to pay a fine of $504,000 for failing to obtain FCC consent to transfer radio station licenses controlled by Starwood before the purchase was finalized. Using this and other examples, Stephen Diaz…

Last year, AT&T proposed an acquisition of Time Warner under which AT&T will acquire Time Warner in a stock-and-cash transaction valued at $107.50 per share. The two parties had structured the deal so that no airwave licenses would be transferred, thus avoiding review by the FCC. However, by avoiding the public scrutiny of the FCC review process, AT&T…