\n<\/p>\n
Champagne reportedly flowed at Paramount Skydance headquarters late last week after the media conglomerate edged out Netflix to acquire the entirety of Warner Bros Discovery for a cool $110bn.<\/p>\n
And on a call with analysts and investors on Monday morning, David Ellison, Paramount Skydance\u2019s chief executive, said the company was \u201cabsolutely confident\u201d that the merger will expeditiously pass regulatory muster both in the US and abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been engaging with regulators around the world and the combination does not come close to hitting any of the metrics that would be problematic,\u201d Ellison said.<\/p>\n
But the deal, which drew outraged statements from many Democratic members of the US Senate, doesn\u2019t necessarily have a glide path to closing, antitrust and competition experts say. While Congress does not have any power to stop the merger, a state attorney general \u2013 or a coalition of attorneys general \u2013 could sue to block the deal, which could put the matter in front of a judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely think they have a shot at stopping it if they pool their resources to make a challenge,\u201d Alvaro Bedoya, who served on the Federal Trade Commission between 2022 and 2025, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
In that vein, Rob Bonta, California\u2019s attorney general, said in a post on X that he was \u201cin conversation\u201d with fellow state attorneys general.<\/p>\n
\u201cParamount\/Warner Bros is not a done deal,\u201d Bonta said in a statement after the deal was announced. \u201cThese two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny \u2013 the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.\u201d (Bonta, who was not made available for an interview, did not provide any further comment.)<\/p>\n
\u201cA combined lawsuit by state attorneys general presents a real threat,\u201d Bill Baer, who served as assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice from 2013 to 2016, told the Guardian. \u201cIt\u2019s harder for them to prevail if [the justice department] has said [the merger] is fine, but it\u2019s not impossible. There are serious antitrust issues that in a normal world would involve further inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The merger will also need to be approved by antitrust officials from the European Commission and the United Kingdom \u2013 though competition and antitrust expert Cristina Caffarra said she didn\u2019t expect that to be an issue, particularly because she sees little willingness to antagonize Donald Trump, who is a strong supporter of the Ellison family and its deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis deal is not particularly significant to anyone in Europe,\u201d she said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t the prospect of lost jobs, like in California. Even on conventional grounds, this would likely be waved through in Europe. They care even less in a Trump administration in which the outcome is foretold.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the process in the UK, Caffarra claimed the country\u2019s \u201ccompetition authority has been decapitated\u201d \u2013 and is far more focused on promoting growth than regulating competition.<\/p>\n
By combining the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming services, as Ellison announced Monday, the deal could reasonably be seen as reducing competition in the marketplace \u2013 though the company has said it would \u201cmaintain\u201d both the Warner Bros and Paramount film studios.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s an argument that this will create a very concentrated market for a very specific kind of movie studio that puts out a very particular kind of movie,\u201d Bedoya, the former FTC commissioner, said. \u201cThere appears to be an even more compelling case that a whole lot of people are going to be put out of work. So I think a state attorney general looking at the labor market effects is going to have something to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The combined company will also be saddled with $79bn in debt, and will surely make significant efforts at cost-cutting that are expected to include employee layoffs. The Writers Guild of America put out a statement last week opposing the deal, saying the merger \u201cmust be blocked\u201d because \u201cthe loss of competition would be a disaster for writers, consumers and the entire entertainment industry\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some US senators have made similar arguments. \u201cIf Paramount Skydance\u2019s deal with Warner Bros. goes through, one family will become a dominant force in American entertainment, with David Ellison owning Warner Bros., Paramount+, HBO, CBS News, CNN, TNT, TBS, Food Network, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, HGTV, and more,\u201d US senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, on Monday. \u201cFederal antitrust law is designed to prevent mergers that would create massive conglomerates like this, which are bad for our economy and for Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
A justice department spokesperson declined comment on the status of the agency\u2019s regulatory process, though Bloomberg News reported that the deal \u201cremains under active review by US antitrust officials\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will work incredibly collaboratively with regulators to ensure that we get a quick path to closing and are confident in our ability to achieve that goal,\u201d Ellison said Monday.<\/p>\n
Although it was not the leading bidder, with Warner Bros Discovery\u2019s board initially backing Netflix\u2019s offer, Paramount has already completed at least two information requests from the Department of Justice. Because the 10-day waiting period mandated by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 expired on 19 February, Paramount said last month that \u201cthere is no statutory impediment in the U.S. to closing Paramount\u2019s proposed acquisition of WBD\u201d.<\/p>\n
While Baer said it appeared that Trump\u2019s Department of Justice was leaning toward approving the deal, and the process is certainly a few steps along already, \u201cthey\u2019ve got authority to issue civil investigative demands and require more information from both parties\u201d now that the deal has been finalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is a substantial risk that the closing of the transaction is delayed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Champagne reportedly flowed at Paramount Skydance headquarters late last week after the media conglomerate edged out Netflix to acquire the entirety of Warner Bros Discovery for a cool $110bn. And on a call with analysts and investors on Monday morning, David Ellison, Paramount Skydance\u2019s chief executive, said the company was \u201cabsolutely confident\u201d that the merger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3239,2036,320,584,23584,4849,23583,3168,455,1755],"class_list":{"0":"post-45991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-antitrust","9":"tag-bros","10":"tag-experts","11":"tag-face","12":"tag-megamerger","13":"tag-paramount","14":"tag-paramountwarner","15":"tag-pictures","16":"tag-real","17":"tag-threats"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45991","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=45991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}