Paramount’s reliance on Gulf sovereign money was a major reason why the company’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery failed to win in an auction for the owner of major media brands like HBO and DC Comics.
Emirati, Saudi, and Qatari sovereign wealth funds fronted $24 billion as part of both Paramount’s initial offer and its $108 billion topping bid for all of WBD, led by the wealthy Ellison family. The money accounted for roughly 30% of the equity value of the deal, whose headline figure is inflated by WBD’s debt load.
But the guarantees on that money — specifically, on how and when the dollars would clear, according to people familiar with the matter — were fuzzy enough to give Warner’s board one more reason to go with Netflix’s $83 billion offer, according to securities filings and people briefed on boardroom discussions.
Billionaire and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, along with his son and Paramount CEO David Ellison, are one of the richest families in the world. But the size of the WBD bid, which includes CNN, meant that even they had to find other financial partners.
