\n<\/p>\n
Warner Bros Discovery has urged shareholders to reject a $108.4bn hostile takeover offer from Paramount Skydance, branding it \u201cinadequate\u201d amid an extraordinary corporate battle to control the legacy media conglomerate.<\/p>\n
WBD agreed to sell its storied movie studios, HBO cable network and streaming service to Netflix in a $82.7bn deal earlier this month, setting the stage for a seismic shift in Hollywood\u2019s industrial landscape.<\/p>\n
But Paramount, which had privately bid for WBD before the Netflix deal was unveiled, swiftly countered with an all-cash offer and vowed to take it directly to shareholders. Unlike Netflix, Paramount \u2013 which is controlled by the billionaire Ellison family \u2013 bid for the entire company, which also includes the CNN news network.<\/p>\n
In a blunt letter to shareholders on Wednesday morning, WBD accused Paramount of having \u201cconsistently misled\u201d investors by claiming its bid has a \u201cfull backstop\u201d \u2013 a safety net to ensure it has sufficient funds \u2013 from the Ellisons.<\/p>\n
Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing a careful evaluation of Paramount\u2019s recently launched tender offer, the Board concluded that the offer\u2019s value is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders,\u201d Samuel A Di Piazza Jr, chairman of WBD\u2019s board, said in a statement. \u201cThis offer once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated to Paramount throughout our extensive engagement and review of their six previous proposals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders and we look forward to delivering on the compelling benefits of our combination.\u201d<\/p>\n
One media analyst likened the saga to a \u201creal-life, far more consequential\u201d <\/em>episode of the HBO drama Succession. \u201cIf you think you know how this plot ends, think again,\u201d said Mike Proulx, vice-president of research at Forrester.<\/p>\n \u201cWBD\u2019s formal rejection of Paramount\u2019s offer changes nothing,\u201d he said. \u201cThe ultimate decision still rests with WBD\u2019s shareholders and that vote is months away. <\/em>What\u2019s clear about Paramount\u2019s bid are the growing eyebrow raises over its Middle Eastern financing. The same US officials and regulators who\u2019ve sounded alarms about China\u2019s influence on TikTok should be crying foul here.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, welcomed WBD\u2019s response to Paramount. \u201cThe Warner Bros Discovery board reinforced that Netflix\u2019s merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interest of stockholders,\u201d he said in a statement to Reuters.<\/p>\n Netflix was already engaging with the justice department and European Commission, the company\u2019s other co-chief executive, Greg Peters, told CNBC. He expressed confidence that the regulators would view the deal as \u201cpro-consumer and pro-growth\u201d.<\/p>\n Questions were swiftly raised about how the Ellisons were funding their proposal, after a regulatory filing revealed it was backed by outside funders including Affinity Partners, an investment firm founded by Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund; and the Qatar Investment Authority.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, it emerged Kushner\u2019s Affinity Partners, a private equity firm, had stepped back from the process.<\/p>\n Di Piazza, the WBD chairman, described on the company\u2019s decision to advise investors to reject Paramount as \u201cnot a hard choice\u201d in an interview on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cNetflix made a compelling offer – it was heavy in cash, certainty of close, a high termination fee, and they responded to the operating issues that we were concerned about,\u201d Di Piazza told CNBC, the financial news network. \u201c[Paramount] had every opportunity to deal with that broad range of issues, and they chose not to.\u201d<\/p>\n WBD accused Paramount of leaning on an \u201cunknown and opaque revocable trust\u201d to shore up its bid and tabling an \u201cillusory\u201d proposal that WBD shareholders should not rely on.<\/p>\n In its letter to shareholders, WBD firmly denied that regulators were more likely to approve Paramount\u2019s bid than its deal with Netflix, and warned of \u201csignificant additional costs\u201d \u2013 including a $2.8bn termination fee to Netflix \u2013 if the Paramount offer was accepted.<\/p>\n \u201cNone of these reasons will be a surprise to [Paramount] given our clear, and oft-repeated, feedback on their six prior proposals,\u201d WBD claimed in its letter to shareholders. \u201cThe terms of the Netflix merger are superior.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has said he plans to be involved in deciding whether any deal will receive approval from regulators \u2013 and made clear that he views the future of CNN, which he has long criticized, as a key factor.<\/p>\n \u201cI think CNN should be sold, because I think the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,\u201d Trump said last week.<\/p>\n Trump has also tried in recent days to distance himself from the Ellisons, using his long-held grudge with CBS \u2013 which is owned by Paramount \u2013 over its 60 Minutes show to reverse his previous warmth towards the family.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called \u2018takeover,\u2019 than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I\u2019d hate to see my enemies!\u201d he wrote in a post on his Truth Social network earlier this week.<\/p>\n Reuters contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warner Bros Discovery has urged shareholders to reject a $108.4bn hostile takeover offer from Paramount Skydance, branding it \u201cinadequate\u201d amid an extraordinary corporate battle to control the legacy media conglomerate. WBD agreed to sell its storied movie studios, HBO cable network and streaming service to Netflix in a $82.7bn deal earlier this month, setting the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[20339,1532,2036,2037,205,4264,1468,4364,3670,3213,2035],"class_list":{"0":"post-37864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-108-4bn","9":"tag-bid","10":"tag-bros","11":"tag-discovery","12":"tag-media","13":"tag-paramounts","14":"tag-reject","15":"tag-shareholders","16":"tag-takeover","17":"tag-urges","18":"tag-warner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}