Paramount’s new, hostile offer to Warner Bros. Discovery: Larry Ellison will personally guarantee $40 billion
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/22/media/paramount-warner-bros-ellisons-revised-deal?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit
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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.
The Warner Bros. board of directors has rejected Paramount’s bid multiple times, opting instead to go with an offer from Netflix, which WBD, CNN’s parent company, says is more valuable. The board also said Paramount has misrepresented itself to WBD shareholders, calling into question the legitimacy of the deal’s proposed financing.
To counteract that critique, Paramount said Oracle founder Larry Ellison – the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison – will guarantee all $40.4 billion of the equity he’s putting up to finance the deal. That’s a big guarantee, putting Larry Ellison on the hook for about a sixth of his net worth if something falls through.
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.
Read more: [https://cnn.it/4p6xjQm](https://cnn.it/4p6xjQm)
I’m still convinced the Ellison’s only really want the news portion of this deal, and are totally okay with losing the bid for the entire company, as long as they get CNN.
Whoever owns CNN prior to the next election is going to be pretty important to the results of that election.
They need to up the offer along with the guarantees
Let’s just say no, in principle. And by the way, if you’re in charge of your company’s accounting and they use Oracle, and you don’t like Ellison, you can always switch to another company. Ellison’s product is overpriced and truly nothing special.