U.S. antitrust chief says Disney, Fox carved out assets 'surgically'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co's $52.4 billion deal to acquire most of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc's assets was "surgically" structured on good advice to be submitted to regulators, Makan Delrahim, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division, said on Thursday.

"We will see what the investigation shows. (Disney) didn't propose to acquire Fox Sports 1 and 2. They didn't acquire Fox Broadcasting and say, you know what, we will combine this with ABC and don't worry about it we'll have an arbitrator decide if prices for advertisers go up or competition for content creators goes down," Delrahim told The Deal's annual corporate governance conference in New York.

"They had good advice and carved out surgically ... a transaction that might be doable. But again, who knows where that transaction leads," Delrahim added.

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker in New York; Editing by Paul Simao)