It’s a bidding war. David Ellison’s Paramount is launching a hostile offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, the company said on Monday.
“The Paramount offer for the entirety of WBD provides shareholders $18 billion more in cash than the Netflix consideration,” the company stated. “WBD’s Board of Directors recommendation of the Netflix transaction over Paramount’s offer is based on an illusory prospective valuation of Global Networks that is unsupported by the business fundamentals and encumbered by high levels of financial leverage assigned to the entity.”
“WBD shareholders deserve an opportunity to consider our superior all-cash offer for their shares in the entire company,” Ellison said. “Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion. We believe the WBD Board of Directors is pursuing an inferior proposal which exposes shareholders to a mix of cash and stock, an uncertain future trading value of the Global Networks linear cable business and a challenging regulatory approval process. We are taking our offer directly to shareholders to give them the opportunity to act in their own best interests and maximize the value of their shares.”
More to come.
