Netflix says Paramount bid ‘doesn’t pass sniff test’ as Warner battle intensifies, FT reports
January 23 (Reuters) – netflix (NFLX) co-chairman Greg Peters said the company is on track to win support from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shareholders for an $82.7 billion bid for its film and television studios. extraordinary‘s (PSKY) rival’s bid “fails the sniff test,” the Financial Times reported on Friday.
In an interview with the FT, Peters said only a “very small” number of WBD shares had been put up for tender in support of Paramount’s hostile $108 billion bid for the entire company.
Netflix, Warner Brothers and Paramount Skydance did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment outside normal business hours.
Peters said the revised offer had “more certainty” than Paramount’s offer, was partly financed by $55 billion in debt, and underlined the strength of Netflix’s balance sheet, the newspaper said.
The Warner Bros. board earlier this month rejected a modified Paramount offer that included $40 billion in equity capital personally guaranteed by Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder and father of Paramount CEO David Ellison.
“If Larry Ellison hadn’t financed this thing independently, there’s no chance Paramount would have been able to pull this off,” Peters told the FT.
Paramount Skydance on Thursday extended the deadline for its hostile tender offer for Warner Bros Discovery to February 20; Shortly after Netflix revised its $82.7 billion offer to all-cash, hoping to speed up the closing of the deal and provide more financial certainty to investors concerned about its previous stock-and-cash deal.
(Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
