Topline
Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery won approval Thursday from the U.K.’s antitrust regulator and culture secretary, removing a significant obstacle for the media megadeal even as the company has agreed to delay closing until next year while broader competition challenges play out.
Paramount has pushed back the Warner Bros. takeover timeline as it faces an antitrust lawsuit.
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Key Facts
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday it would not send Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal into a deeper review, concluding the transaction does not create competition concerns that warrant further scrutiny.
Lisa Nandy, the U.K.’s secretary of state for culture, media and sport, also said she would not intervene in the takeover after receiving “assurances” and “legally binding commitments” from Paramount. Those pledges include maintaining the “distinct editorial identities of key services” and protecting “the editorial independence of news.”
If the deal is completed, Paramount would oversee both Channel 5 News and CNN International. The U.K. government said the company has committed to ensuring Channel 5 News keeps its editorial independence and that its editorial direction remains “entirely separate from CBS News and CNN International.”
surprising fact
The commitments come after Paramount CEO David Ellison wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that debate over the Warner Bros. acquisition had centered partly on “whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN.” Ellison said there had been “speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions,” adding that while he could not offer “a view into my heart and mind,” he has “regularly” voted for candidates from both major U.S. political parties and holds some views “that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans.” He added: “Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve—not to any party or cause.”
big number
More than $1.9 billion is at stake in ticking fees Paramount has agreed to pay if the Warner Bros. deal has not received clearance by June 2027.
key background
Regulatory clearance in the U.K. marks another milestone for Paramount’s $110 billion deal for Warner Bros., following the European Union’s approval last month. The European Commission said Paramount’s deal—announced in February after Netflix pulled its own offer—had “fully [addressed]” competition concerns after the legacy media firm agreed to concessions, including an agreement to divest its stake in a film distribution joint venture with United International Pictures in Europe. The merger has faced broad scrutiny, including from the Writers Guild of America and 12 attorneys general—both groups that sued to block the transaction. Paramount agreed to push back its deal to 2027 until a judge decides in the antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 states, which argued the deal would result in “higher prices, lower quality and less content for film and television.”
