Paramount Gets Rejected AGAIN After Daddy Ellison Tries to Sell Insurance as Value Creation

Hey if you struggle getting a girlfriend don’t feel too bad… 

David Ellison has one of the richest and most powerful men in the entire world as a dad… and still gets left on read, repeatedly so it seems…

According to people who know people who know board calendars, Warner Bros Discovery is likely to tell Paramount Skydance to take its freshly polished $108.4 billion hostile bid and… politely move along. Yes, even after David Ellison’s dad (you may know him as Larry Ellison) personally guaranteed the equity like a Silicon Valley cosigner with something to prove.

To be clear, Paramount didn’t raise the actual $30-per-share cash offer. That stayed right where it was. Instead, they added some garnish: a higher reverse termination fee, now matching Netflix’s, and an extended tender deadline. Translation: we didn’t bring more money, but we brought confidence.

(Source: Financial Times)

Warner Bros’ board, however, appears unmoved. The current expectation is that they’ll keep marching toward a rival cash-and-stock deal with Netflix, whose $82.7 billion offer may look smaller on paper, but comes wrapped in something boards love even more than headline numbers: fewer ways for this to blow up.

Netflix’s structure is cleaner, the financing is clearer, and the execution risk doesn’t come with a footnote that reads “trust us, Larry’s got this.” Walking away from that deal would cost Warner Bros a $2.8 billion breakup fee… which, notably, Paramount’s revised offer still doesn’t fully cover. That math matters when you’re sitting in a boardroom and not at a pitch dinner in Malibu.

(Source: New York Post)

Even shareholders aren’t buying the upgrade. Harris Oakmark, Warner Bros’ fifth-largest holder, reportedly shrugged at the revision and called it “not sufficient,” which is investor-speak for nice try though.

Paramount keeps arguing its bid is more “market-proof” than Netflix’s, since Netflix stock can wobble. True. But Paramount’s offer also asks directors to believe that regulators, politicians, and antitrust hawks will suddenly take a long lunch. Lawmakers from both parties have already started throat-clearing about media consolidation, and even Donald Trump has hinted he wants a say. That’s not exactly a calming sentence in a merger memo.

The irony? A combined Paramount-Warner Bros empire would technically create a studio bigger than Disney. The problem is getting there without detonating half the board’s risk tolerance along the way.

So essentially, daddy wrote the check. The board still said, “We’ll call you.”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Netflix and Disney as mentioned in the article.