Paramount and WBD move from a contested bidding process to a definitive $31-per-share cash deal, placing WBD under Paramount’s proposed ownership pending completion.
Netflix relinquishes its proposed WBD acquisition and receives the $2.8 billion breakup fee; WBD shareholders are slated to receive cash rather than participate in Netflix’s proposed transaction.
Second-order effects
The $31-per-share outcome resets the immediate valuation benchmark established by Netflix’s $27.75 all-cash offer and Paramount’s earlier $30 bid, strengthening WBD’s negotiating result.
Paramount absorbs both the higher purchase price and the termination payment, concentrating the financial burden of winning the auction with the buyer rather than Netflix.
Third-order effects
If completed, the deal would further concentrate major studio, streaming, and media assets under a single buyer, making scale and financing certainty more central to future media-M&A contests.
The progression from competing bids to a paid exit for the losing bidder suggests breakup-fee and all-cash terms may carry more weight in contested transactions, though one deal alone does not establish a market-wide standard.
The trend: This is one data point in a media-consolidation trend where strategic buyers compete for scaled content and distribution assets with increasingly certain cash terms.
Paramount/Warner Bros is not a done deal. These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny — the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.
Please let's circle up all the State AG's and talk about how this is going to kill completion in the industry and drive down wages, and product quality for consumers. There are lots of agents in Hollywood who can tell you how past mergers and consolidations have hurt their clien…
Reminder: In December Paramount was going to use $24 billion from 3 gulf states to finance its WBD deal: $10b from Saudi, $7b each from Abu Dhabi and Qatar. I've asked Paramount if they are still using that money in this deal. No answer.
Paramount should enjoy its growing news monopoly while they have it because when Democrats win back power we are going to break up these anti-democratic information conglomerates. All of them.
Enough with the defeatism. Stop saying Paramount won. Stop saying it now owns CNN. It's very weird to see so many people who have been covering this every day relent to inevitability. This deal will be challenged. Here's California AG Bonta throwing a big flag on the play:
🚨 Governor @GavinNewsom confirms that the deal between Warner Brothers and Paramount is not a done deal. “We believe a fair, independent process” when evaluating the merger. [video]
The deal will go thru DOJ & if it sues to block it, an indp court will rule on merits of the case. (State AGs can do same). If a future DOJ seeks to sue to unwind it, same process. Implying “Democrats” will “break up” these deals implies those indp processes would be politicized
What was true for Netflix is still true now for Paramount. The merger of two of Hollywood's biggest studios must be subject to the highest levels of scrutiny, free from White House political influence, to determine its impact on American jobs, freedom of speech, and the future o…
As we've been saying for months, the inevitability of a deal among shareholders is divorced from the regulatory risk. Ignoring the law creates a scenario where people feel they have to choose between evils. They do not. The Paramount-WB deal is illegal and should be blocked.
This $2.8 billion termination fee is bigger than the combined global box office of Paramount's Terminator franchise https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @Lucas_Shaw @MichelleF_Davis
Even After Pull-Out, WarnerDiscovery's Board Believed Both Netflix & Skydance Deals Would Win Regulatory Approval. Netflix Insiders Say “As Sarandos Got To WH, Everything Was Done. …
Even After Pull-Out, WarnerDiscovery's Board Believed Both Netflix & Skydance Deals Would Win Regulatory Approval. Netflix Insiders Say “As Sarandos Got To WH, Everything Was Done. …