Paramount’s all-cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery includes $24 billion from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. That number was buried in a SEC filing the company released on Monday.
In total, Paramount’s bid includes a $11.8 billion commitment from the Ellison family, $24 billion from “three sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf” and $1 billion from the Chinese technology company Tencent. There are also commitments from RedBird Capital Partners and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. RedBird Capital Partners was founded by Gerry Cardinale and counts former CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker among its executives.
The filing also noted that Paramount had completed its due diligence and has no further diligence items to be satisfied.
On Monday, Paramount publicly announced a hostile takeover bid to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, offering $30 per share as part of its all-cash offer. This offer is $18 billion more than the Netflix deal WBD accepted last Thursday, bringing the enterprise value of Paramount’s offer to $108.4 billion.
Netflix’s winning bid to acquire Warner Bros. — the streaming and studio assets that will be spun off from Warner Bros. Discovery — valued the soon-to-be spun off company at $82.7 billion. The streamer also offered $27.75 per share bid. Because Paramount’s offer is significantly more than Netflix’s, Paramount noted that Warner Bros. Discovery is now obligated to take the offer directly to WBD’s shareholders.
Though the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery has been intense from all sides, it’s clear that Paramount really wants this. Before WBD started accepting offers from multiple companies in November, Paramount had already put in three bids to acquire WBD. All three offers were shot down for being too low. It should also be noted that Paramount is the only bidder that wants all of Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix and Comcast, when it was in this race, were only interested in the company’s streaming and studio assets.
