British antitrust regulators said that 21st Century Fox’s proposed $16bn bid to consolidate ownership of UK pay-TV giant Sky  would give the Murdoch family too much influence in the British media — but they kept the door open to remedial actions that would still make a deal possible.

The preliminary finding comes after Rupert Murdoch sealed a separate agreement to sell a chunk of Fox assets, including its 39% stake in Sky, to Walt Disney for $52bn in December. That has made regulatory scrutiny of the Fox-Sky transaction here an important part of a much bigger, globe-spanning deal.