WBD Board Rejects Paramount’s ‘Illusory’ Bid, Backs Netflix Deal

The board of Warner Bros. Discovery has unanimously urged its shareholders to reject a hostile takeover from Paramount Skydance, calling its financing "inadequate" while reaffirming support for a competing acquisition by Netflix.

• Trust issues: At the heart of the rejection is a deep distrust of Paramount’s funding. In a sharply worded letter, the board blasted Paramount for having “consistently misled” shareholders, claiming a supposed “full backstop” from the Ellison family “does not, and never has,” existed and instead relies on an “unknown and opaque revocable trust.”

• Two paths diverge: The two proposals present starkly different futures for the media giant. Paramount's aggressive, over $108 billion all-cash offer would swallow WBD whole, while Netflix’s nearly $83 billion deal is a more surgical strike for the company's studio and streaming assets, spinning off its linear networks into a separate entity.

• One bid stumbles: Paramount’s bid took another hit this week after losing the financial backing of Affinity Partners, the Jared Kushner-led investment firm. Meanwhile, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos projected confidence, stating the WBD board "reinforced that Netflix’s merger agreement is superior."

The decision now falls to WBD shareholders, who must weigh Paramount's higher all-cash offer against the board's stark warnings and the perceived stability of the more complex Netflix cash-and-stock deal. But the corporate back-and-forth is spilling into the open with growing acrimony. For a deeper dive, The New York Times explores the accusation that the Ellison family ‘misled’ shareholders over financing, while Reuters offers a just-the-facts summary of the board's rejection.