Jim Armitage: Fox raids could put the kibosh on bid for Sky

Time travels at double speed for Rupert Murdoch. A couple of weekends back, he was celebrating being on the mend after a back injury by throwing a dinner party in Beverly Hills with The Rock and Morgan Freeman.

Today, he’s dealing with a European Commission raid on Fox in Hammersmith. While he’s been laid up in bed, he’s been dealing with two bids for Sky and a takeover of Fox to boot.

We’ve little idea what today’s EC probe is about, and the usual lack of sense from Fox’s communications team has left everyone wondering.

Competition lawyers today were making the following guesses: commission officials have been hassling Hollywood lately about whether it’s restricting households from one European country accessing cheaper movie broadcasts from another. Could they now be looking at the same issue with European football?

Could they be probing collusion by the big broadcasters on bidding for European sports rights?

Could they be looking again at the weirdly long 12-year deal Fox negotiated to broadcast top-flight Dutch football?

Has a whistleblower come forward?

The commission stresses the raids are not an indication of guilt, but surely they wouldn’t stage such a dramatic assault on businesses across Europe on a mere hunch.

One thing’s for sure: for Murdoch currently trying to convince UK regulators that Fox should be allowed to buy Sky — that Fox is a “fit and proper” owner — none of it looks good. Particularly when you put this latest setback together with US sexual harassment court cases against Fox News rumbling on.

However, in the tangled tale of Murdoch’s exits from his media empire, it could be viewed as a sideshow.

We all know Murdoch will get his way eventually. Sky will be swallowed up by Fox (and then Disney) anyway, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Sky shareholders now have a credible alternative bidder in Comcast.

Increasingly, the owner of NBC in the US looks like a cleaner, less controversial owner. Not only that, but its bid values Sky at £3.5 billion more than Fox’s.

Fox remains the favourite, given that it already owns nearly 40% of Sky. But the play is moving in Comcast’s favour.

Fox must up its bid price sharply to persuade Sky investors otherwise.

A hat-tip to Dave Lewis for making Tesco boring again. After years of crisis, today’s numbers — decent growth, slightly ahead of forecasts — are reassuringly dull; a reminder of the glory days when Sir Terry Leahy was at his best.

We even have a return of the traditional year-end dividend.

For investors, this is a turning point for the supermarkets business. The next set of results will include the Booker acquisition. Expensive but strategically clever, it will make Tesco exciting again. For good reasons this time.