David Ellison
Photo: Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images
David Ellison’s Paramount launched a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery on December 8, just three days after Netflix revealed its $83 billion deal to buy WB. Netflix and Paramount had originally both submitted proposals to buy Warner. But WBD opted to go with Netflix — and Ellison didn’t take the loss well. Paramount is now going directly to shareholders, offering $30 per share to acquire “all of the outstanding shares” of WBD. That values the company at a total of $108 billion, versus the Netflix deal, which the Paramount press release claims “offers inferior and uncertain value” and could potentially be halted by Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission for being monopolistic. Trump said on December 8 that the deal “could be a problem,” per CNBC. David Ellison and his father, Larry, who is worth $365 billion, are close to the president, and under Trump, the FTC allowed the family to buy Paramount earlier this year. Plus, Paramount’s $24 billion in debt financing comes from sovereign wealth funds based in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, per The Hollywood Reporter, as well as from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.
“WBD shareholders deserve an opportunity to consider our superior all-cash offer for their shares in the entire company,” David Ellison said in a statement. “Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion. We believe the WBD Board of Directors is pursuing an inferior proposal which exposes shareholders to a mix of cash and stock, an uncertain future trading value of the Global Networks linear cable business and a challenging regulatory approval process. We are taking our offer directly to shareholders to give them the opportunity to act in their own best interests and maximize the value of their shares.”
Despite Paramount’s bravado, there is no confirmation that Trump would stop the Netflix deal. THR reports that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos met with the president before the deal was announced. “Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Sarandos said in a statement announcing his company’s WBD deal. “By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better. Together, we can give audiences more of what they love and help define the next century of storytelling.”
A notable difference between Paramount’s and Netflix’s proposals is that the former is offering to buy the entirety of WBD — including its cable networks like CNN and TNT. Netflix’s deal is contingent upon WBD spinning off the cable networks a separate company. On December 4, before Netflix’s purchase was confirmed, Paramount sent WBD CEO David Zaslav a letter claiming WBD had “embarked on a myopic process with a predetermined outcome that favors a single bidder.” Stay tuned for what’s next in the Warner Bros. wars.
