Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle, will personally guarantee $40.4 billion for Paramount’s offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. – Aaron Schwartz\/Sipa\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
Paramount has upped the ante in its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, announcing Monday that Larry Ellison will personally guarantee the tens of billions of dollars he is putting up to bankroll the transaction. The Ellisons will also let shareholders peer into the finances of their family trust.<\/p>\n
The Warner Bros. board of directors has rejected Paramount\u2019s bid multiple times, opting instead to go with an offer from Netflix<\/a>, which WBD says is more valuable. The board also said Paramount has misrepresented itself<\/a> to WBD shareholders, calling into question the legitimacy of the deal\u2019s \u201cillusory\u201d proposed financing.<\/p>\n To counteract that critique, Paramount said Oracle founder Larry Ellison \u2013 the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison \u2013 will guarantee all $40.4 billion of the equity he\u2019s putting up to finance the $78 billion deal. That\u2019s a big guarantee, putting Larry Ellison on the hook for about a sixth of his roughly $250 billion net worth if something falls through.<\/p>\n Larry Ellison also agreed not to revoke his family trust, which could have complicated the potential financing of the deal, and Paramount is publishing records that confirm the trust owns 1.16 billion Oracle shares, which the WBD board called into question.<\/p>\n Paramount also upped its breakup fee to $5.8 billion from $5 billion, matching Netflix\u2019s promised payment to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders if the deal were to fall through.<\/p>\n One aspect of Paramount\u2019s offer that hasn\u2019t changed: its overall value.<\/p>\n Paramount offered $30 per share for WBD, including CNN and the rest of its cable channels. Netflix offered $27.75 per share for Warner Bros. and HBO. But Netflix and WBD argue that plans to spin off the cable assets will increase those stations\u2019 overall value and will, in total, value the company more highly than Paramount\u2019s deal.<\/p>\n WBD\u2019s board will be expected to respond to Paramount\u2019s revised offer. Because the changes address some but not all of WBD\u2019s concerns, it\u2019s not clear that the board will change its mind.<\/p>\n But shareholders also have a say, and the hostile nature of Paramount\u2019s offer mean that owners of WBD\u2019s stock could reject the board\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n The Paramount offer is financed in large part by the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and WBD\u2019s board has raised concerns about why Larry Ellison, one of the world\u2019s richest people, needs so much help to bankroll the deal.<\/p>\n Paramount has said it has \u201cair tight financing,\u201d and David Ellison has publicly called WBD \u201cabsurd\u201d for questioning whether or not the deal\u2019s backers are good for the money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle, will personally guarantee $40.4 billion for Paramount’s offer to buy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[73299,146,85,46,7041,400,4523,411,2223],"class_list":["post-198470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-david-ellison","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-larry-ellison","tag-netflix","tag-paramount","tag-tv","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}