Warner Bros. Discovery pulled out of merger talks with Paramount Global – Kommersant

Warner Bros. Discovery has ended talks on a possible merger with Paramount Global, reports CNBC with reference to own sources. The parties negotiated for several months, and for the first time known the media became aware of them in December last year.

At the same time, as the channel’s sources note, Paramount continues negotiations with other interested parties in purchasing the company’s assets. Thus, David Ellison’s film company Skydance Media continues to conduct a comprehensive review of Paramount Global’s business. In the end of January reportedthat Skydance is interested in purchasing National Amusements, a holding company that owns a 77% stake in Paramount Global. At the time, CNBC sources claimed that Skydance was considering several possible scenarios for purchasing Paramount, one of which included taking the company off the stock exchange and merging with Skydance.

In addition, at the end of January, Bloomberg reportedthat Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group has offered to buy Paramount Global for $14 billion.

Paramount Global was created in December 2019 through the merger of Viacom and CBS Corp. Paramount’s assets include the film company of the same name, several television channels under the CBS brand, cable channels MTV, Nickelodeon, etc. The company’s share price is now close to its lowest level in the last 52 weeks, and its market capitalization is only $7.7 billion – this is the lowest level since since the global financial crisis of 2008.

Was the deal between Warner Bros. profitable? Discovery and Paramount Pictures – in the material “Merger unites streaming”.

Kirill Sarkhanyants