Overview
- Warner Bros. Discovery, which set an April 23 shareholder meeting Thursday, began mailing a definitive proxy and said owners of record as of March 20 at 5 p.m. ET can vote.
- WBD shareholders would receive $31 in cash per share, a roughly 147% premium to the company’s unaffected stock price, in a deal valued around $110–111 billion.
- Financing includes $47 billion in equity backed by the Ellison family and RedBird and $54 billion in debt commitments from Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo.
- Paramount would assume about $33 billion of WBD debt, leaving the combined company with roughly $79 billion in long‑term debt, a load executives say they plan to offset with about $6 billion in cost savings.
- Regulatory and local reviews are underway, with Canada’s Competition Bureau examining the merger and Los Angeles County commissioning a jobs impact study, while the contract adds a 25‑cent quarterly ticking fee after Sept. 30 and a $7 billion reverse termination fee if regulators block the deal.