Paramount Says Report of $71 Billion Warner Bid Is Inaccurate
(Bloomberg) — Paramount Skydance Corp., Warner Bros. He said a report that he was working with a consortium of Middle East sovereign wealth funds on a $71 billion bid for Discovery Inc. was inaccurate.
David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is working on a bid with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Variety reported, citing sources familiar with the talks.
“The information Variety published is categorically false,” a spokesperson for Paramount said in a statement to Bloomberg. “This is a confidential process that we respect and therefore we will not comment until the process is completed.”
The offer, which would value Warner Bros. at about $28.65 per share, is largely backed by the Ellison family, with Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital also backing the bid, according to Variety. Government funds will contribute $7 billion each, and Paramount Skydance will donate $50 billion, Variety reported. According to Bloomberg, Warner Bros. The board had previously rejected multiple offers from Paramount for up to $23.50 per share.
Representatives of sovereign wealth funds did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Warner Bros. Its shares rose as much as 6.4% in New York, according to an initial Variety report, before paring back some of those gains. Paramount shares rose as much as 3.7%.
Warner Bros., the parent company of HBO, CNN and its namesake movie studio, put itself up for sale in October after attracting interest from multiple parties, setting a deadline for offers on Thursday. In addition to Paramount, Netflix Inc. and Comcast Corp. are also expected to make bids for the film and streaming side of the business. Paramount is the only party interested in purchasing all of Warner Bros.
Paramount and Warner Bros. The merger will reshape the media industry by uniting the two largest movie studios and the two most influential news networks under one roof. Any deal is likely to face regulatory scrutiny.
Oracle Corp. Ellison, son of Chairman Larry Ellison, has been aggressively pursuing Warner Bros. since its $8 billion acquisition of Paramount, which merged it with Skydance in August. The Ellisons appear to have the support of President Donald Trump and have argued that Paramount’s offer represents the simplest deal.
Warner Bros. Chief Executive David Zaslav is in favor of splitting the company in two as originally planned, as he expects its film and streaming assets could generate a premium if it were separated from its beleaguered cable TV assets.
–With help from Hannah Miller.
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