But Warner Bros described the Paramount offer yesterday as risky, saying it was backed up by \u201can unknown and opaque revocable trust\u201d and involved \u201cno Ellison family commitment of any kind\u201d, among other factors.<\/p>\n
Warner Bros Discovery also stressed that the Paramount offer\u2019s dependence on foreign investors \u2013 US$24b of the financing is from Middle East sovereign wealth funds \u2013 would require further regulatory scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur deal structure is clean and certain, with committed debt financing from leading institutions,\u201d Netflix co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters wrote in a letter to Warner Bros shareholders, according to Business Insider.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no contingencies, no foreign sovereign wealth funds, and no stock collateral or personal loans,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly weighed in on the bidding war, saying the Netflix deal \u201ccould be a problem\u201d as it would leave Netflix with a huge market share of the film and TV industry.<\/p>\n
He later said that he wanted to ensure new ownership of CNN as part of the sale. He has long criticised CNN for airing critical news coverage that he refers to as \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Strong rationale\u2019 <\/p>\n
The President\u2019s powerful son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was initially a minor investor in the latest Paramount bid through his Middle East-backed private equity company, Affinity Partners. However, he backed out of the deal on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2004continue to\u2004believe\u2004there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount\u2019s offer,\u201d Affinity Partners said in a statement to AFP.<\/p>\n
Unlike Netflix\u2019s offer, Paramount\u2019s latest bid included the buyout of cable channels such as CNN, TNT, TBS and Discovery, which would be added to its group of TV assets, including CBS, MTV and Comedy Central.<\/p>\n
As Netflix emerged as the likely winning bidder for Warner Bros, Hollywood\u2019s elite launched an aggressive campaign against the acquisition.<\/p>\n
The streaming giant is viewed as a pariah in some Hollywood circles, largely because of its reluctance to release content in cinemas and its disruption of traditional industry practices.<\/p>\n
In an interview on Tuesday in Paris, Sarandos said it would continue to distribute Warner Bros films in cinemas if its takeover bid succeeded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to operate Warner Bros studios independently and release the movies traditionally in cinema,\u201d he said, while admitting his past comments on theatrical distribution \u201cnow confuse people\u201d.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Warner Bros described the Paramount offer yesterday as risky, saying it was backed up by \u201can unknown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62148,1040,2748,138,2026,13313,4223,46613,685,1743,1094,111,139,69,421,2171,38606,22049,1041,118460,3291,26592,36314,686,102],"class_list":["post-188867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-acquire","tag-bid","tag-bros","tag-business","tag-discovery","tag-giant","tag-hollywood","tag-hostile","tag-last","tag-launched","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paramount","tag-plans","tag-rejected","tag-rejects","tag-rival","tag-sticks","tag-streaming","tag-takeover","tag-warner","tag-week","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}