Warner Bros board again rejects Paramount takeover bid in favour of Netflix
Make us a preferred source
Make us a preferred source on Google
The news: The board of Warner Bros. Discovery determined that the amended takeover offer from Paramount Skydance, submitted on 22 December last year, is inferior to the deal it had already struck with Netflix and urged shareholders to reject the hostile takeover.
The numbers: Paramount submitted an amended offer prior to Christmas which reiterated a plan to buy shares at USD30 ($44.56) per share but included a higher break-up fee and assurances from billionaire Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, that he would personally guarantee USD40.4 billion in equity financing backing the deal.
Paramount Skydance’s original offer came just days after Warner Bros reached a USD72 billion cash-and-stock deal with Netflix on 5 December 2025.
The context: In a press release published Wednesday, chair of the Warner Bros board, Samuel A. Di Piazza said that Paramount’s bid remains “inferior to our merger agreement with Netflix across multiple key areas.”
Piazza added that Paramount’s offer continues to provide insufficient value, including the large amount of debt financing required and lack of shareholder protections in the event that the transaction does not complete.
Warner Bros also raised doubts about Paramount’s ability to close the deal.
What they said: The Warner Bros. board said in a letter to shareholder on Wednesday that “PSKY has repeatedly failed to submit the best proposal for WBD shareholders despite clear direction from WBD on both the deficiencies and potential solutions.”
“The WBD Board, management team and our advisors have extensively engaged with PSKY and its representatives and provided it with explicit instructions on how to improve each of its offers. Yet PSKY has continued to submit offers that still include many of the deficiencies we previously repeatedly identified to PSKY, none of which are present in the Netflix merger agreement, all while asserting that its offers do not represent its "best and final" proposal”, the board wrote.
The source: Warner Bros Discovery
