{"id":42537,"date":"2026-01-07T21:12:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T21:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/why-warner-bros-discovery-dialed-up-the-heat-in-its-latest-rejection-of-paramount\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T21:12:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T21:12:33","slug":"why-warner-bros-discovery-dialed-up-the-heat-in-its-latest-rejection-of-paramount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/why-warner-bros-discovery-dialed-up-the-heat-in-its-latest-rejection-of-paramount\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Warner Bros. Discovery dialed up the heat in its latest rejection of Paramount"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6942b65504eda4732f2daaab?format=jpeg\" alt=\"David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison\"\/><figcaption>David Zaslav is chief of Warner Bros. Discovery, left, which just rejected Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison&#039;s latest bid for Warners.<\/p>\n<p>JC Olivera\/Variety via Getty Images; Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Warner Bros. Discovery escalated its language in rejecting Paramount&#039;s bid for the eighth time.<\/li>\n<li>WBD said Paramount was in weak financial condition and had a history of media leaks.<\/li>\n<li>M&amp;A experts broke down the strategy behind WBD&#039;s tough talk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Warner Bros. Discovery&#039;s board raised its hackles on Wednesday while rejecting Paramount Skydance&#039;s bid for the eighth time in favor of Netflix&#039;s offer.<\/p>\n<p>WBD used pointed language, calling Paramount&#039;s bid the &quot;largest leveraged buyout in history by a wide margin&quot; and tying its potential failure to previous big LBOs that didn&#039;t close on the initially agreed-upon terms.<\/p>\n<p>In its new filing, WBD also described Paramount&#039;s financial condition as &quot;not strong,&quot; noting that its credit was already rated &quot;junk&quot; by S&amp;P before the &quot;extraordinary amount of debt financing&quot; required by the deal. Paramount, for its part, has emphasized that $40.4 billion in equity of its new bid is fully backstopped by Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison.<\/p>\n<p>WBD&#039;s strong language suggests that the board and leadership &quot;just want to move on,&quot; and the &quot;largest LBO&quot; angle is a new and compelling one, Wharton M&amp;A professor Paul Nary said on X.<\/p>\n<p>David Zaslav-led WBD also ramped up its accusations that Paramount has acted litigiously and leaked to the press.<\/p>\n<p>In the filing, WBD cited new press reports in the New York Post indicating Paramount was considering abandoning its offer and might pursue &quot;DefCon 1&quot; litigation against WBD&#039;s board. WBD said that Paramount didn&#039;t deny the reports, suggesting that the company was leaking to the press. WBD had previously complained that there had been &quot;extensive media leaks and rumors&quot; about Paramount&#039;s proposals.<\/p>\n<p>M&amp;A experts said the stepped-up language was likely drafted in anticipation of a lawsuit against WBD, either by Paramount or WBD shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>Now that Paramount has lost to Netflix, &quot;it is likely to attempt to seek legal remedy such as a shareholder derivative suit or potentially a direct lawsuit,&quot; said Raul Gastesi, a partner at Gastesi Lopez Mestre &amp; Cobiella.<\/p>\n<p>Corey Martin, managing partner of Granderson Des Rochers, a law firm focused on entertainment and media, said the new filing felt calibrated to deter WBD shareholders from backing Paramount&#039;s hostile bid.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The audience is really the shareholders, because there&#039;s always the risk of shareholder lawsuits,&quot; Martin said. &quot;It is colorful stuff, but Paramount&#039;s is a hostile bid.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Martin also saw the emphasis on legal and press tactics as part of a PR strategy to portray Paramount as a bad actor, as well as a pre-litigation tactic.<\/p>\n<p>So, what happens now?<\/p>\n<p>LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield wrote in a note on Wednesday that Paramount could still outbid Netflix, but it would &quot;require an overhaul of their current bid, and a dramatic increase in the cash invested from the Ellison family and\/or their friends and financing partners.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Zaslav is chief of Warner Bros. Discovery, left, which just rejected Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison&#039;s latest bid for Warners. JC Olivera\/Variety via Getty Images; Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images Warner Bros. Discovery escalated its language in rejecting Paramount&#039;s bid for the eighth time. WBD said Paramount was in weak financial condition and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}