Francois said "Sky Deutschland is subscale compared to its UK sister. Maybe a German buyer could merge it with something else and get to scale.”

Media analyst Tom Harrington agrees: “Allen has had a couple of hits in the last couple of decades. Backing him only makes sense if it’s a tax write-off.”

Alice Enders says a second bid would be a logical move for the Australian media mogul. She also points to potential interest from Lagadere, the owner of French publisher Hachette.



Enders said the Penguin decision was an unfortunate setback, adding that the deal would have given Bertelsmann a powerful position in the US market. She argues that the major issue is the German group’s focus on old media such as books, magazines and free-to-air television, which has left it struggling to build scale in developed markets with tough competition regimes.



“This is an old media company,” Enders says.



“When you’re in something of a pressured old media industry then you’ve got to look for scale.”

Long-standing music analyst at Enders Analysis Alice Enders said Ek’s comments sit within a long-standing saga between tech firms, which hinges on owning “the direct relationship with the customer”.

She told City A.M. that Spotify has a “frenemy” relationship with Apple, which means despite its flurry of criticism, it knows Apple is the ultimate gatekeeper to the army of iPhone users that it needs to keep happy.

“The price increase has merely compensated for other drags . . . as their energy hedges expire and wage demands increase,” said James Barford, analyst at the media consultancy Enders Analysis. He pointed to BT’s modest target for 2022 of 4 per cent growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

“At a certain level of money, it is control that matters the most,” says Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis and a longtime Murdoch watcher. “What this transition is about is future control and restoration of the original structure of News Corp and a long-term umbrella for the newspaper assets.”

Britain’s most respected media analyst, Claire Enders, has backed Rupert Murdoch’s proposal to merge Fox Corporation and News Corporation, labelling the potential deal “tremendous” and said it signalled that he had emerged from hibernation.

Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis who has worked in and analysed the media and telecommunications’ sectors for the past four decades, met News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks on Monday to discuss the deal.