# Paramount Skydance - Warner Bros. Discovery Deal [[Skydance-Paramount]] — controlled by [[David Ellison]] and backed by his father [[Larry Ellison]] and [[Gerry Cardinale]]'s [[RedBird Capital Partners]] — agreed on **February 27, 2026** to acquire [[Warner Bros. Discovery]] for **$31.00 per share in cash (~$110.9 billion**, ~$111B enterprise value). The deal followed a months-long bidding war against Netflix (see [[Netflix Timeline]]), which declined to raise its offer and withdrew on February 26, 2026; WBD shareholders approved the sale in April 2026. The acquisition adds [[CNN]], HBO/Max, Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, and the Discovery cable networks to a company that already owns [[CBS News]] — placing **two of the three legacy U.S. news operations (CBS News and CNN) under common ownership** controlled by an owner aligned with the Trump administration. It would also shelve WBD's own previously announced plan to split into "Warner Bros." (studios/streaming) and "Discovery Global" (cable networks). On **June 12, 2026**, the [[Department of Justice]] cleared the transaction without conditions, finding it "not likely to result in harm to competition." Critics — including [[Elizabeth Warren]] — framed the friendly review as evidence of [[Regulatory Capture]], coming just months after Paramount settled a Trump lawsuit and purged CBS News. ## July 2026: state-AG blockade stalls the closing The federal clearance did not end the antitrust fight. A coalition of **state attorneys general sued and secured a temporary restraining order** blocking the closing on antitrust grounds, and on **July 24, 2026** Paramount agreed **not to close the transaction until five days after the states' trial concludes, or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first** — pushing the once-imminent Q3 2026 closing out by up to a year. The delay carries a running price: under the deal terms a **"ticking fee" of roughly $7 million per day (~$650M per quarter) begins accruing October 1, 2026** if the transaction has not closed by September 30. [[Larry Ellison]] has **personally guaranteed the bid** through the Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust (subscription agreement of February 27, 2026), and press coverage estimates he faces a potential **~$10B hit if the deal collapses**. Paramount Skydance shares (PSKY) closed at $7.95 on July 29, 2026, well below deal-announcement levels — a market read on both the delay risk and the debt load. ## August 2026: trial date set, and the guarantee comes under strain Two developments sharpen the July picture. **The trial has a date.** The suits were filed in the **U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California** by a coalition of **twelve state attorneys general** together with the **Writers Guild of America West and East**, alleging the transaction violates **Section 7 of the [[Clayton Antitrust Act]]** by reducing competition in key markets. Judge **Araceli Martínez-Olguín** has set trial to begin **March 2, 2027**. Against the July 24 stipulation, that means the earliest realistic close is spring 2027 — roughly a year past the original target — with the June 1, 2027 backstop close behind it. **The guarantee is now the weak point.** [[Larry Ellison]]'s personal backstop of **$40.4 billion** was underwritten against an Oracle share price that has since collapsed: [[Oracle Corporation]] fell roughly a third across 2026 and close to half from its early-June peak, vaporizing an estimated **$213 billion** of Ellison's net worth and dropping him from the world's second-richest person to roughly eighth by mid-August. The two facts compound. A guarantee sized in February 2026 against a February balance sheet must now survive until at least spring 2027, while the collateral behind it has lost a third of its value and the ticking fee accrues at ~$650M per quarter from September 30. Nothing in the litigation has changed the merits — but the buyer's capacity to wait out the litigation has. **Status as of August 29, 2026:** DOJ-cleared, state-blocked, trial set for March 2027, close gated to no earlier than five days after a merits determination. The live risk is no longer regulatory. It is whether the financing structure survives the delay it has already agreed to. ## September 2026: Ellison pledges more Oracle stock Oracle's definitive proxy statement (DEF 14A), filed **September 25, 2026**, discloses that [[Larry Ellison]] had **413 million Oracle shares pledged** as of September 21, 2026, securing "personal term loans used only for outside ventures." Bloomberg and Seeking Alpha report that this is **67 million more shares than previously pledged, worth about $9.2 billion**, bringing the pledged block to roughly 36% of his Oracle holdings. The proxy says Ellison "has the financial capacity to repay the related personal term loans without resorting to the sale or transfer of pledged shares," and Oracle's Governance Committee concluded the pledges "do not pose a material risk to Oracle or its stockholders." The proxy does not name the deal the loans fund. Press coverage connects the new pledge to the Ellisons' side of this acquisition. That fits the August picture above, where the personal guarantee was underwritten against Oracle stock that has since fallen sharply. Treat the link as reported, not disclosed. The $9.2 billion is loan collateral, not new transaction value, and does not change `value_usd`. > [!warning] Corrected 2026-10-06 (later the same day): the deal has closed > The status line written earlier today was out of date. On **September 21, 2026** Paramount Skydance settled with the twelve state attorneys general (CBS News). Under the settlement it commits $1.5B to domestic production over five years and 30–32 films a year, with a $30M penalty per missed film and a forced sale of Miramax if it falls short. It may not sell or close the Los Angeles lots for five years, and must set up an independent board overseeing the editorial independence of CBS News and CNN. A federal judge approved the settlement on September 30. **The merger closed on October 6, 2026**, and the combined company is now called **Skydance** (NYSE: SKYD) (Forbes; Yahoo Finance). The March 2027 trial will not happen. [[David Zaslav]] left at closing. The Oracle-pledge section above still describes how the Ellison side financed the deal. **Status as of October 6, 2026 (evening):** closed. See [[Skydance Media]]. See: [[Paramount Timeline]], [[CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery Timeline]], [[Media Consolidation]], [[Antitrust]]