In its attempt to outbid Netflix, Paramount has offered Warner Bros even more money, which the latter studio is now said to be considering. The seemingly endless back-and-forth over who will own Warner Bros continues. To briefly recap: Netflix initially looked like the obvious front-runner, having made deal worth over $82bn to acquire the studio ... Paramount ups its offer to buy Warner Bros, Warner Bros makes positive noises
In its attempt to outbid Netflix, Paramount has offered Warner Bros even more money, which the latter studio is now said to be considering.
The seemingly endless back-and-forth over who will own Warner Bros continues.
To briefly recap: Netflix initially looked like the obvious front-runner, having made deal worth over $82bn to acquire the studio last December. Then Paramount Skydance came riding in with a higher cash offer of $108.4, which Warner Bros initially rejected – partly because it saw too many risks attached.
Following that rebuffal, Paramount Skydance scrambled its lawyers, demanding that Warner Bros reveal the details of its Netflix deal. Having calmed down a bit, Paramount has decided to simply offer Warner Bros even more money – according to Deadline, a deal worth $31 per share. Netflix’s previous offer equated to around $27.75 per share.
Paramount has added other sweeteners to its revised deal, some of which we aren’t business-y enough to understand. But one of the simpler ones is a re-affirmation that Paramount will pay the $2.8bn kill fee that will result from Warner Bros backing out of its deal with Netflix.
At present, Warner’s deal with Netflix still stands. But the current offer from Paramount is such that Warner’s board is now seriously considering it; that’s quite a shift in attitude from where we were in January.
As a background note to all this, there’s still the Federal Trade Commission to consider. Any major corporate acquisition like this has to be approved by that government agency, intended to prevent monopolies and unfair competition under US anti-trust laws.
But we’ve already seen how the Trump administration can wave through such acquisitions if the right deals are made; on the eve of Skydance’s multi-billion-dollar purchase of Paramount, Donald Trump was paid a settlement of $35m over a complaint the President had about a segment on the news programme, 60 Minutes (aired on CBS News, owned by Paramount).
Not long after, the $8bn merger was approved by the FCC.
Trump has previously said that Netflix’s purchase of Warner “could be a problem”, and recently leaned on the streaming giant to fire one of its board members, Susan Rice.
Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison, on the other hand, appears to be somewhat friendlier with Trump. He attended Trump’s State of the Union address on the 24th February – the same day that his company’s sweetened Warner Bros deal was put forward.
We’ll bring you more on what all these awful rich people are up to as it comes in.
