Sky Group

Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate owned by Comcast and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue, with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019. The company is primarily involved in satellite television and broadband services.

Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc.

Prior to November 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 that it had agreed to buy the remainder of Sky, pending government approval. However, after a bidding war that included The Walt Disney Company (which was, in turn, acquiring most of 21st Century Fox assets), U.S. media and telecoms conglomerate Comcast acquired the entirety of Sky in 2018 for £17.28 per-share.

Before the acquisition by Comcast, Sky was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of approximately £18.75 billion (€26.76 billion) as of 2018.

Management
The first CEO of BSkyB was Sam Chisholm, who was CEO of Sky TV before the merger. Chisholm served in this position until 1997. He was followed by Mark Booth who was credited with leading the company through the introduction of Sky. Tony Ball was appointed in 1999 and completed the company's analogue to digital conversion. He is also credited with returning the company to profit and bringing subscriber numbers to new heights. In 2003, Ball announced his resignation and James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch was announced as his successor. This appointment caused allegations of nepotism from shareholders.

On 7 December 2007, it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would be stepping down as BSkyB's non-executive chairman and would be replaced by his son, James. In turn, James stepped down as CEO of BSkyB, to be replaced by Jeremy Darroch.

The current company directors are Comcast personnel; Michael J Cavanagh (Comcast Senior VP & CFO), Arthur R Block (Legal Counsel) and David L Cohen (Senior VP & CDO).

Financial performance
Financial results have been as follows:

In February 2019 The Economist magazine claimed that Sky enjoys gross margins of 50%.