Alright, so the mega-billionaire tech bro Larry Ellison just went full wallet warrior in this Hollywood studio cage match. He slapped down a personal guarantee for over forty billion dollars to back his son David's company, Paramount Skydance, in their insane attempt to buy Warner Bros Discovery. That whole deal is valued at over one hundred billion. This is a direct power play against Netflix, which has its own eighty-something billion-dollar offer on the table for Warner's studios and streaming stuff. The Warner board told shareholders to reject the Paramount Skydance bid last week, calling the financing shaky, which is exactly why Daddy Ellison stepped in with this "irrevocable" promise to cover the equity part and any potential damages.
The specifics of this financial nuke are kind of wild. Larry Ellison agreed not to mess with his family trust during all this, and they're gonna prove the trust holds a ton of Oracle stock worth hundreds of billions. The equity piece they need is that forty-four billion, coming from the Ellison family itself, plus a bunch of sovereign wealth money from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. The rest is just a mountain of debt from banks like Bank of America and Citigroup. Paramount says their offer, which works out to thirty bucks a share for the whole company, including channels like CNN, is just better than Netflix's. They're also going around the Warner board directly to shareholders with a tender offer, accusing the board of not even talking to them, and they hint they might raise their bid even more.
Whoever wins this gets the keys to the nerd kingdom: the Harry Potter stuff, Game of Thrones, the whole DC Comics cinematic universe. David Ellison claims his company's takeover would mean more movies and more content for people to watch, calling Warner an iconic treasure that needs preserving. Over in the other corner, Netflix has been quietly tightening up its own financing for its competing bid. Warner's board hasn't said anything about Ellison's new guarantee yet, and Netflix isn't talking either. However this ends, it's basically going to redraw the entire map of the entertainment industry based on who gets to control these storytelling properties.
The specifics of this financial nuke are kind of wild. Larry Ellison agreed not to mess with his family trust during all this, and they're gonna prove the trust holds a ton of Oracle stock worth hundreds of billions. The equity piece they need is that forty-four billion, coming from the Ellison family itself, plus a bunch of sovereign wealth money from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. The rest is just a mountain of debt from banks like Bank of America and Citigroup. Paramount says their offer, which works out to thirty bucks a share for the whole company, including channels like CNN, is just better than Netflix's. They're also going around the Warner board directly to shareholders with a tender offer, accusing the board of not even talking to them, and they hint they might raise their bid even more.
Whoever wins this gets the keys to the nerd kingdom: the Harry Potter stuff, Game of Thrones, the whole DC Comics cinematic universe. David Ellison claims his company's takeover would mean more movies and more content for people to watch, calling Warner an iconic treasure that needs preserving. Over in the other corner, Netflix has been quietly tightening up its own financing for its competing bid. Warner's board hasn't said anything about Ellison's new guarantee yet, and Netflix isn't talking either. However this ends, it's basically going to redraw the entire map of the entertainment industry based on who gets to control these storytelling properties.
