#paramount-skydance

#paramount-skydance

The all-cash offer of $30 per share works out to a valuation of more than $108 billion, or an equity valuation of $78.7 billion, for WBD's entire operation, putting it in the upper echelons of hostile takeover attempts in recent decades. In fairness, the $82.7 billion deal, or $72 billion equity valuation, from streaming giant Netflix is also pretty massive. That was the one WBD's board had agreed on, and it excluded certain pieces of the business.

David Ellison is officially the CEO of Paramount Skydance. After a successful Paramount merger, next on his wish list is Warner Bros. Discovery - and he's launched a hostile takeover bid in an effort to scoop it out from Netflix's hands. The 42-year-old founded Skydance back in 2006 with some help from his father Larry Ellison, the Oracle cofounder who's worth $277 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Paramount Skydance on Monday launched a hostile bid worth $108.4 billion US for Warner Bros. Discovery, throwing a wrench into the deal with Netflix in a last-ditch effort to create a media powerhouse that would challenge the dominance of the streaming giant. Paramount submitted multiple offers starting in September to forge an entertainment powerhouse capable of challenging Netflix and tech giants such as Apple that have expanded into media but faced rejections.

The US media and entertainment giant Paramount Skydance has won the auction for the rights to broadcast most Champions League matches in the UK from 2027 to 2031 in a major shake-up of the domestic rights market. The Guardian has learned that Paramount, whose subsidiary company Paramount+ owns the rights for Champions League games in the US, made the largest bid in this week's auction and an announcement is due.

The publication said the company formed an investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to submit a $71bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery. The report said Paramount Skydance would contribute about $50bn towards the proposed acquisition with the remainder coming from the wealth funds. Paramount Skydance has described the involvement of the sovereign wealth funds as categorically inaccurate.

Paramount Skydance, backed by the family of CEO David Ellison, is getting ready to make a bid to take over all of Warner Bros. Discovery before the two companies can go through with their plan to split, per a new report from The Wall Street Journal. If such a deal happens, it would put networks as diverse as CBS, CNN, TCM, and MTV under one roof and result in the combination of two historic Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.

On Thursday evening, the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve Paramount's $8.4 billion merger with fellow entertainment firm Skydance Media, a deal that took considerable lobbying from the Trump administration and connections to Larry Ellison.