The heads of Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Entertainment companies will gather in Sun Valley, Idaho, next month for Allen & Co.’s annual media conference, an event that is beginning to rival the annual World Economic Forum in Davos in its sheer concentration of wealth and power.
This year’s lineup, obtained by Variety, includes tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, media moguls like Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Hass. Variety reported that they would be joined by Nikki Haley, but has since updated their article to indicate that the former ambassador to the UN would not be attending.
The guest list for Sun Valley is once again overflowing with bold faced names with the cash and egos to spur a fresh wave of M&A. There’s Apple’s Tim Cook, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Reid Hastings, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and Comcast’s Brian Roberts. They’re joined in the dealmakers club by Liberty Global Chairman John Malone and top lieutenants Mike Fries and Greg Maffei, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CAA’s Bryan Lourd, ICM’s Chris Silbermann, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, ViacomCBS’s Shari Redstone and Viking Global Investors’ Andreas Halvorsen. Also making the cut is Jason Kilar, the WarnerMedia CEO who is widely expected to be odd man out and lose his job when the company’s spinoff with Discovery is finalized. AT&T chief John Stankey, who negotiated the pact with Zaslav, was invited, but will not attend.
Variety speculates that the Sun Valley confab, which has previously hosted corporate mega-mergers such as Comcast’s purchase of NBC/Universal, may once again hatch big media mergers, as the conference takes place “at a time when most insiders believe that Hollywood and Silicon Valley are in the midst of an unprecedented period of consolidation.”
Update — This article originally included portions of the Variety report indicating that Nikki Haley would be attending the Sun Valley conference. Variety has since updated its article to indicate that Haley will not attend the conference.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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