High finance is not always dry and dull. Sometimes it behaves more like an action-franchise box office hit. And this week, just as Abu Dhabi Finance Week opened on Al Maryah Island under full lights and camera, a parallel drama was unfolding in New York and Los Angeles with all the glamour and plot twists of the movie business.
A consortium of investors led by Hollywood giant Paramount has assembled a $108 billion takeover bid for the even bigger Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) – a move that would have sounded ludicrously cinematic even by Tinseltown standards just a few months ago.
What makes the offer all the more remarkable is that it arrives hot on the heels of Netflix’s earlier agreed $82.7 billion for certain WBD assets. It is an escalation worthy of a summer blockbuster sequel.
WBD is not just another corporate target. It holds some of America’s most culturally resonant media properties, such as HBO, CNN, DC Studios, Warner Pictures, Looney Tunes, Friends and a movie back catalogue that amounts to a century of global storytelling and soft power. These are Hollywood’s crown jewels.
But this is not simply a Wall Street fight. The cash behind these bids is increasingly Gulf money, and the setting on Al Maryah this week provided a perfect split-screen: on one side, CEOs and sovereign fund chiefs discussing capital flows, fintech, listing pipelines and next-generation investment; on the other, some of those same funds manoeuvring in real time for a say in one of America’s biggest entertainment companies.
It is a case study in how Gulf capital is shaping global corporate outcomes.
The Paramount bid is backed by Saudi Arabia’s PIF and the Qatar Investment Authority sovereign wealth funds as non-voting partners. A relatively little-known Abu Dhabi investor, L’Imad, is also reportedly putting up capital, but was not even noted on the otherwise exhaustive organigram published by Bloomberg just as ADFW began. The omission proves the point: the region is moving faster than the charts can keep up.
Also attached to the Paramount funding are RedBird Capital, already familiar to London audiences after its involvement in the aborted Daily Telegraph takeover by UAE entities, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which enjoys backing from Saudi Arabia.
There will, of course, be hurdles. Any takeover of WBD will face antitrust scrutiny, and in the case of a deal with significant Middle East input, will need approval from US regulators on foreign ownership, inevitably stirring congressional interest.
But it is hard to imagine a Trump administration blocking a takeover bid part financed by his friends in the Gulf, should the president decide to get involved in the approvals process, as looks likely.
The rival deals have already stirred up the Hollywood cultural politics that derailed past bids where the wrong suitor said the wrong thing about the soul of cinema. But Paramount is probably more acceptable to the luvvies of Lah Lah Land than Netflix.
A Paramount-anchored deal arguably has more creative legitimacy than a Netflix route. It is a studio-to-studio merger story the industry can understand, nostalgists can applaud, and talent agencies may support. A Netflix takeover risks being framed as streaming swallowing cinema.
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There is also the unspoken reality that tends to assert itself in these matters: price usually wins, and sovereign wealth has deep pockets. If a $108 billion offer stands against $82.7 billion, it becomes difficult for directors, shareholders, unions and even US politicians to ignore maximising value.
If you were programming the week, you might imagine it was scripted intentionally: as global finance converges on Abu Dhabi to talk about liquidity, diversification and post-oil capital deployment, the Gulf quietly positions itself at the centre of one of the biggest media deals in history.
“You can’t ignore the UAE now. It really is becoming the Capital of Capital,” said Kish Desai, who moved from London to Dubai in April to launch Tourmaline Partners’ local operation. It was almost like a voiceover to the WBD drama in America.
Sovereign funds across the region have gone from passive investors to active power brokers. If the Gulf ends up with strategic influence over WBD it symbolises precisely what ADFW is trying to say: the region is now a stakeholder in the world’s cultural and financial future.
Abu Dhabi Finance Week could hardly have hoped for a better backdrop.
Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia
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