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New year, and the markets are open. While the rest of us try to stretch out the end of the Christmas break to let the last phases of our cheese coma pass, the thrusters and the go-getters are back in the office, shouting into telephones. This includes the leadership at both Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance.
Warner’s first act, as the Alka Seltzer loses its fizz, is to officially reject the improved, enlarged, some might say engorged, offer from Paramount Skydance.
The offer was made by David Ellison’s team on December 22nd with a press and PR assault, including news of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison providing an “irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion” toward the company’s $108 billion all-cash offer for Warner Bros. Discovery.
David Ellison
Bloomberg News now reports that the board will meet next week and vote on a response to Paramount’s offer, where they are expected to reject the amended offer in favour of the existing agreement to merge with Netflix in a deal valued at more than $80 billion for just the streaming/studio part of the business. The Paramount offer is for the whole damn thing.
Warner Bros. Discovery shares have done well out of this, topping out over 150% up.
Regulatory review was also a concern, and Paramount also upped their offer to match the “breakup fee” portion of the Netflix offer to $5.8 billion. This is a payment to be made in the event that the deal falls at the regulatory approval hurdle and the company needs to be broken up to make it through that gateway.
Anyway… back to work, everyone! Fuck.
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