{"id":45099,"date":"2026-02-10T15:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/david-ellison-kicks-in-a-few-billion-more-as-he-makes-his-9th-bid-for-warner-bros-discovery\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:51:37","slug":"david-ellison-kicks-in-a-few-billion-more-as-he-makes-his-9th-bid-for-warner-bros-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/david-ellison-kicks-in-a-few-billion-more-as-he-makes-his-9th-bid-for-warner-bros-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"David Ellison kicks in a few billion more as he makes his 9th bid for Warner Bros. Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6939d3df7ecd1d1da6634f6a?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Ellison WBD\"\/><figcaption>David Ellison and Paramount Skydance just adjusted their bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images; Aleksander Kalka\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Paramount just updated its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, as it battles Netflix&#039;s offer.<\/li>\n<li>While Paramount didn&#039;t raise its topline price, it sweetened its deal by offering to pay fees.<\/li>\n<li>The renewed offer shows Paramount CEO David Ellison&#039;s confidence in getting regulatory approval.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>David Ellison&#039;s first eight offers to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery were rejected. Now, the Paramount Skydance CEO is betting that the ninth try&#039;s the charm.<\/p>\n<p>Paramount just adjusted its all-cash offer for all of WBD, though it didn&#039;t raise its topline bid from $30 per share. WBD turned down Paramount&#039;s previous offers and is selling its streaming and studio assets, including HBO, to Netflix for $27.75 per share in cash. (Unlike Paramount&#039;s bid, the Netflix deal doesn&#039;t include WBD&#039;s cable channels, like HGTV and TNT.)<\/p>\n<p>Ellison&#039;s company told WBD&#039;s board of directors on Tuesday morning that it had made the following changes to its offer:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Adding a so-called &quot;ticking fee&quot; that will pay WBD shareholders $0.25 per share, or about $650 million, every quarter that its bid hasn&#039;t closed, starting in January 2027<\/li>\n<li>Paying other costs involved with taking its offer, like a $2.8 billion breakup to Netflix and a possible $1.5 billion debt refinancing cost<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Paramount also reiterated that the $43.6 billion in equity it&#039;s pledging in its $108 billion offer is fully backstopped by the Ellison family. Ellison&#039;s father, Larry, is one of the richest people in the world after cofounding tech giant Oracle in the late 1970s, and has also been a major supporter of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Ellison&#039;s revamped offer, which would give WBD shareholders more money every quarter if the transaction doesn&#039;t close by January 2027, helps &quot;underscore confidence in the speed and certainty of its regulatory pathway,&quot; Paramount said.<\/p>\n<p>While the Ellisons have rapport with Trump, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has built a relationship with the president as well.<\/p>\n<p>Trump said last week he&#039;d decided he &quot;shouldn&#039;t be involved&quot; in the regulatory process and will leave the decision to the Department of Justice, after saying in December that he&#039;d &quot;be involved&quot; in the Netflix-Warner Bros. regulatory decision.<\/p>\n<p>Netflix has pitched itself as a better option for shareholders and the entertainment industry, and has said that a Netflix-Warner Bros. tie-up would &quot;create and protect jobs.&quot; Sarandos was grilled on Capitol Hill last week in a politically charged Senate subcommittee meeting about the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal.<\/p>\n<p>WBD shareholders now have until February 20 to tender their shares to Paramount, which would pressure the board to choose the Ellison offer over Netflix&#039;s.<\/p>\n<p>Although Ellison covets WBD&#039;s assets, he hasn&#039;t raised his overall purchase price since the Netflix deal was announced. Ellison has said Paramount&#039;s bid is &quot;superior to Netflix&#039;s,&quot; and his company has repeatedly made that case to WBD shareholders, arguing that WBD&#039;s TV networks aren&#039;t worth much, if anything, after factoring in debt and the trading price of Versant, a similar company.<\/p>\n<p>The Paramount head honcho had foreshadowed a potential sweetening of the bid when he texted WBD CEO David Zaslav on December 4, saying: &quot;Please note importantly we did not include &#039;best and final&#039; in our bid.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Ellison was also overheard saying in mid-December that WBD&#039;s board couldn&#039;t accept his $30-per-share bid without &quot;admitting breach of fiduciary duty,&quot; Business Insider reported. That&#039;s because it was the same offer the WBD board \u2014 which has a duty to act in the best interest of shareholders \u2014 had previously rejected.<\/p>\n<p>All this suggested that an upgraded bid could be in the works.<\/p>\n<p>Some in Hollywood expected to see a bidding war that would benefit WBD shareholders, regardless of whether Netflix or Paramount won. Kevin Mayer, Disney&#039;s former top dealmaker, predicted that the battle between Netflix and Paramount could raise the cost to buy WBD by $5 billion to $10 billion.<\/p>\n<p>So far, that bidding war hasn&#039;t materialized as Ellison holds firm, betting that his bid is already enough to win over WBD shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Ellison and Paramount Skydance just adjusted their bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images; Aleksander Kalka\/NurPhoto via Getty Images Paramount just updated its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, as it battles Netflix&#039;s offer. While Paramount didn&#039;t raise its topline price, it sweetened its deal by offering to pay fees. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45099","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\/45099","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=45099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}