{"id":46914,"date":"2026-03-05T17:41:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T17:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-key-paramount-ally-makes-the-case-for-using-middle-east-money-to-buy-warner-bros-the-world-is-changing\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T17:41:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T17:41:28","slug":"a-key-paramount-ally-makes-the-case-for-using-middle-east-money-to-buy-warner-bros-the-world-is-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-key-paramount-ally-makes-the-case-for-using-middle-east-money-to-buy-warner-bros-the-world-is-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"A key Paramount ally makes the case for using Middle East money to buy Warner Bros.: &#8216;The world is changing.&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69a9b3c71fb3fcb42648fa73?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (middle) sits next to Elon Musk (right) and U.S. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent (left) at a U.S.-Saudi business conference in Washington, DC., November 2025.\"\/><figcaption>In the second Trump administration, American businesses and government officials  have been eager to do deals in the Middle East. Paramount&#039;s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery may use financing from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pictured here next to Elon Musk and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in November, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Last year, Paramount said it would use $24 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar to help buy WBD.<\/li>\n<li>Now that Paramount has won that deal, it won&#039;t say whether that&#039;s still the plan.<\/li>\n<li>A key Paramount backer suggests that Gulf money would be a good thing for this deal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We still don&#039;t know if Paramount intends to use billions of dollars from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia to help it buy Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n<p>But if Paramount <em>does<\/em> end up doing that, it wouldn&#039;t be a bad thing, says a key Paramount backer.<\/p>\n<p>That update comes via Gerry Cardinale, who heads up RedBird Capital Partners, the private equity company that helped finance Larry and David Ellison&#039;s acquisition of Paramount last year and is doing the same with their WBD deal now.<\/p>\n<p>In a podcast with Puck&#039;s Matt Belloni published Wednesday night, Cardinale wouldn&#039;t comment directly on Paramount&#039;s previously disclosed plans to use $24 billion from sovereign wealth funds controlled by Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar to help buy WBD.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he reiterated Paramount&#039;s current messaging on the deal&#039;s financing: The $47 billion in equity Paramount will use to buy WBD will be &quot;backstopped&quot; by the Ellison family and RedBird \u2014 meaning they are ultimately on the hook to pay up. The rest of the $81 billion deal will be financed with debt.<\/p>\n<p>Cardinale also acknowledged what Paramount has disclosed in its current disclosure documents: It intends to sell portions of that $47 billion commitment to other investors: &quot;We haven&#039;t syndicated anything at this time,&quot; he said. &quot;We do expect to syndicate with strategic, domestic, and foreign investors. But at the end of the day, that alchemy shouldn&#039;t matter because it&#039;ll be done in the right way.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>And when asked about concerns about Middle Eastern countries owning part of a media conglomerate that includes assets like CNN, Cardinale suggested that could be a plus.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think we want to be a global company,&quot; he said. &quot;You look at what&#039;s going on right now geopolitically. What&#039;s going on right now geopolitically out of the Middle East wouldn&#039;t be, the positives of that would not be happening without some of those sovereigns that you&#039;re referring to.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He continued:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&quot;The world is changing. We can stick our head in the sand and pretend it&#039;s not, or we can embrace globalization and the derivative benefits both geopolitically and otherwise that come from that. Content generation coming out of Hollywood is one of America&#039;s greatest exports.I firmly embrace the global nature and orientation that we bring to this from a capital standpoint, from a footprint standpoint, etc. At the end of the day, I do understand some of the concerns that you&#039;ve raised, but that will work itself out between signing and closing because at the end of the day, worst-case scenario, Ellison and RedBird are 100% of this thing.&quot;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All of which suggests to me that Paramount still intends to use money from Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds to buy WBD.<\/p>\n<p>What I don&#039;t understand is why the company won&#039;t say that out loud. Does that mean it&#039;s still negotiating with potential investors? Or that it&#039;s reticent to disclose outside investors, for whatever reason, until it has to? A Paramount rep declined to comment.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second Trump administration, American businesses and government officials have been eager to do deals in the Middle East. Paramount&#039;s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery may use financing from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pictured here next to Elon Musk and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46914","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\/46914","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=46914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}