\n While friendly, mutually agreed upon acquisitions between two companies tend to have a higher success rate, hostile takeover bids, though riskier and often costly, can prove successful, too.\n <\/p>\n
\n If Paramount\u2019s $30-per-share, all-cash bid worth $108 billion (including debt)\ufeff for complete ownership of WBD succeeds, it\u2019ll be the fourth-largest hostile takeover to be completed over the past 20 years, according to data Dealogic shared with CNN. And oftentimes the initial hostile takeover bid a company announces goes even higher.\n <\/p>\n
\n As it stands, though, here are the top five largest hostile takeover bids that have succeeded. All figures exclude debt:\n <\/p>\n
\n In 1999, UK-based telecom company Vodafone Airtouch (now Vodafone Group) first presented the board of German telecom company Mannesmann with an all-stock acquisition, which Mannesmann\u2019s board rejected.\n <\/p>\n
\n Vodafone proceeded with a hostile takeover bid to buy Mannesmann shares that was finalized in 2000 and valued at $171 billion.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Anheuser-Busch](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-488619414.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Anheuser-Busch, the victim of a successful hostile takeover bid by InBev, formed a company that later became known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. That company then launched a hostile takeover bid for SABMiller in 2015 after it failed repeatedly at friendly takeover attempts. The negotiated deal settled at $122 billion in 2016.\n <\/p>\n
\n Pfizer succeeded with its hostile takeover bid of Warner-Lambert, a pharmaceutical company known for making the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, in 2000. The all-stock deal closed at $110 billion that year.\n <\/p>\n
ABN Amro by Royal Bank of Scotland Group<\/p>\n
\n Royal Bank of Scotland, seeking to prevent a friendly takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro by Barclays, got two other banks to collectively make a hostile bid that would divide ABM among all three. It was eventually finalized in 2007 in a deal valued at $96 billion. The deal, however, helped contribute to RBS\u2019 demise.\n <\/p>\n
\n Sanofi-Synthelabo\u2019s surprise hostile takeover bid of Aventis, a Franco-German pharmaceutical company, was valued at $73 billion in 2004.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount and Netflix are in a vicious tug-of-war over Warner Bros. Discovery. On one side of the rope:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-185108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}