{"id":378225,"date":"2026-04-06T17:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378225\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:33:12","slug":"paramount-skydance-secures-24-billion-from-gulf-states-for-warner-bros-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378225\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Skydance Secures $24 Billion From Gulf States for Warner Bros. Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tParamount Skydance<\/a>, led by David Ellison, has received commitments of close to $24 billion to back its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, Variety has confirmed.<\/p>\n

\n\tSaudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund (PIF) agreed to provide about $10 billion to Paramount, with the state-controlled funds of Qatar and Abu Dhabi providing the remainder of the $24 billion, according to a source familiar with the agreement, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tA Paramount Skydance spokesperson declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount\u2019s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which has a $111 billion enterprise value, is pending regulatory approvals. The companies have said they expect the deal to close by the end of the third quarter of 2026. Last month, the acting head of the DOJ\u2019s antitrust division, Omeed Assefi, said the Paramount-WBD deal will\u00a0\u201cabsolutely not\u201d be on a fast-track for approval due to political reasons<\/a>, in the context of the Ellison family\u2019s friendly ties to Trump.<\/p>\n

\n\tWBD has set April 23 for a special shareholders meeting<\/a> to vote on the Paramount Skydance transaction.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount\u2019s offer for WBD as of Dec. 1 included an aggregate of $24 billion from the Middle Eastern funds, per an SEC filing at the time. Since then, the company has not disclosed how much the three funds might be contributing toward its winning bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which WBD\u2019s board of directors accepted in February after Netflix opted to not counter Paramount\u2019s $31\/share offer.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, in December, Paramount said Chinese gaming and internet company Tencent, which had committed $1 billion to the Paramount Skydance bid, was no longer a financing partner because of the WBD board\u2019s concerns over foreign ownership. However, Tencent was back on board as an investor in the deal with fresh funding,\u00a0Bloomberg News reported last month.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn earlier SEC filings, Paramount Skydance said the three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds \u201chave agreed to forgo any governance rights \u2014 including board representation \u2014 associated with their non-voting equity investments.\u201d According to Paramount, that means the deal \u201cwill not be within CFIUS\u2019s jurisdiction,\u201d referring to the U.S.\u2019s intra-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, led by the Treasury Department, which reviews foreign investments in American businesses for potential national security risks.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo weeks ago, seven Democratic U.S. senators issued a call for the FCC to conduct a \u201cthorough review\u201d of the foreign investors<\/a> backing Paramount\u2019s WBD proposed deal in a letter addressed to agency chairman Brendan Carr.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the WSJ story, because each of the Middle Eastern wealth funds will own \u201cfar less\u201d than 25% of the combined company, Paramount execs don\u2019t expect the funds\u2019 involvement \u201cto spark a review\u201d by the FCC.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeparately, earlier last month, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren\u00a0(D-Mass.) and\u00a0Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)\u00a0slammed the Trump administration\u2019s Treasury Department for failing to initiate a CFIUS national security review<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Paramount Skydance\u2018s WBD deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Ellison\u2019s father, Larry Ellison \u2014 co-founder of Oracle and one of the wealthiest multibillionaires \u2014 committed up to $46.7\u00a0billion toward the winning WBD deal. The participation of the three Middle Eastern funds will reduce the total amount of equity Larry Ellison will need to contribute to the Warner Bros. acquisition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, has received commitments of close to $24 billion to back its takeover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,86818,411,9483],"class_list":{"0":"post-378225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-paramount-skydance","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378225","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=378225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}