Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox has agreed to buy European pay-TV firm Sky for £11.7 billion, sticking to its earlier offer despite complaints from some investors.

Fox said it would pursue a Scheme of Arrangement, meaning it would need the backing of 75 per cent of Sky’s independent shareholders who vote to secure a deal that values Sky at £18.5 billion in total.

Seeking to consolidate his media empire across Europe and the US, Murdoch is buying the 61 per cent of Sky he does not already own to fully acquire its 22 million customers in Britain, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria.

But the price of £10.75 per share, representing a premium of around 40 per cent on the day before the initial proposal was received, disappointed several top 50 shareholders who accused Sky of selling out to their founder and biggest shareholder too cheaply. People familiar with the matter have told Reuters that Fox pounced after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June sent the pound down about 15 per cent against the US dollar and Sky’s share price tumbling.

“The enhanced capabilities of the combined company will be underpinned by a more geographically diverse and stable revenue base. This combination creates an agile organisation that is equipped to better succeed in a global market,” Fox said in a statement.

The agreed deal comes five years after Murdoch failed in a previous bid to buy Sky when a newspaper phone hacking scandal at one of his tabloids derailed a previous offer.

Since then, the 85-year-old media mogul has split his business into two parts, with Fox housing the TV assets and News Corp. home to his newspapers, including The Sun and Times of London.

Fox said it expected the acquisition to be completed before the end of 2017.