The Empire Strikes Back
A hostile takeover bid is a way to buy back all the shares of a company without having to worry about the validation of the latter’s board of directors. In short, make a very high offer which will first speak to the shareholders, and to which the managers will have to comply, by force. This is what is happening at Warner Bros. Discovery, since Paramount launched a hostile takeover bid to buy the company before it was acquired by Netflix (information relayed by The Hollywood Reporter). This would amount to a $108.4 billion buyout.
For this, Paramount is offering much more cash, while showing that this buyout will be much simpler to validate, especially since it applies to the entire industry. In other words, Paramount wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery as a wholeunlike Netflix which wants to buy Warner Bros without Discovery.
David Ellison is also counting on his links with Trump to assert this takeover. He knows that the deal between Netflix and Warner Bros will require a long legal battle, while for his part, he can rely on his cronyism with the American president to pass this acquisition much more easily, and quicklywhich is a strong argument for shareholders. And, in an attempt to pass itself off as the white knight on duty, Paramount also has the argument that this acquisition will benefit the world of cinema, given that Netflix, as a streaming service, is a danger for cinemas:
“ We are confident that our offering will help strengthen Hollywood. It is in the interest of the creative community, consumers and the film industry. We believe they will benefit from increased competition, greater investments in content production and the number of theatrical releases, as well as a richer offering of films thanks to our transaction proposal. »
What Paramount is careful not to say is that according to Axios, its offer is financially supported by Affinity Partners, managed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, notably through the purchase of Electronic Arts.
In short, everyone is scrambling to get the lion’s share, and in the end, it’s the employees and the public who will suffer. Because Paramount is not necessarily a better choice for Warner Bros Games, given its inexperience in the video game industry. A sector which is obviously very secondary, not to say tertiary, in this takeover, which shows to what extent the publisher is in danger today.
We don’t know how this whole quagmire will be resolved, but rest assured that new twists and turns are expected.