Can Comcast cobble AT&T cable?

Cable operator Comcast Corp. stunned the industry over the weekend by offering to buy AT&T’s cable business for $44.5 billion in stock plus the assumption of $13.5 billion in debt. The offer, amounting to a “hostile bid,” comes after a similar one was rejected by AT&T chairman C. Michael Armstrong. It is directed at the company’s board of directors and shareholders and comes in advance of AT&T’s plans to create a separate tracking stock for its cable business, known as AT&T Broadband. (In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Comcast Cable President Stephen Burke remarked, “We’re trying to accelerate AT&T’s own plan to break itself up.”) If AT&T’s board approves the deal, the new company would reach nearly a quarter of the nation’s 100 million cable households, dwarfing the nation’s second largest cable operator, AOL Time Warner, which has 13 million customers.