Paramount Skydance’s owners David and Larry Ellison and their partners at RedBird Capital are expected to immediately tell shareholders that they will commit to eventually covering the deal’s $2.8 billion breakup fee — or about $1 share — preserving their all cash bid if enough investors tender their shares in favor of the Paramount deal by its Jan. 8 deadline.

Many investors and even people inside Warner Bros. Discovery expected a bidding war to emerge after Paramount Skydance went “hostile” last week, appealing directly to WBD shareholders to reject the company’s decision to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max to Netflix for $27.75 a share.

Paramount Skydance has no immediate plans to sweeten its $30-a-share, all-cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, sources say. Getty Images

Bidding war talk heated up Tuesday now that WBD is on the verge of formally calling on investors to reject Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid for the entire company. Sources say WBD is planning to make a formal filing possibly as early Wednesday arguing why shareholders should stay the course with Netflix; their argument will mainly center on the “lack of certainty” with the financing sources Paramount Skydance is relying on to upend the Netflix deal. 

But sources close to Paramount Skydance and their investing partners at RedBird Capital say there is nothing uncertain about their financing. 

The feeling inside Paramount Skydance is they “don’t have to do anything immediately, and (they) have to be disciplined based on the feedback from investors,” said one person with direct knowledge of the matter. “(They) have yet to be convinced that Netflix has a better offer and the feedback for the $30 all cash bid has been positive.”

This person pointed to recent comments by famed media investor Mario Gabelli, who has already said he will tender his WBD shares for Paramount’s all-cash bid instead of Netflix’s deal, which is tied up in stock, complex financing, and subject to lengthy regulatory delays. Gabelli has no problem with the company tapping the Persian Gulf for some of its equity, one of the moves cited by WBD for rejecting its offer.

Warner Bros Discovery, headed by CEO David Zaslav, is on the verge of formally calling on investors to reject Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid for the entire company. REUTERS

“I want the money for my clients and I want it quicker,” Gabelli told On The Money.

Reps for WBD and Paramount Skydance had no immediate comment.

Paramount Skydance is arguing it lined up credit lines from Bank of America, Apollo, Larry Ellison, as of now, will chip in $12 billion in cash, and the Gulf State funds will contribute another $24 billion in equity. The sovereign funds are putting up the money without board seats or a say in managing the new company if Paramount Skydance should win, sources said.

Executives at Paramount Skydance also argued their deal’s regulatory certainty since Netflix would be combining those streaming assets, something that will likely touch off a lengthy DOJ antitrust investigation and uncertainty in the courts.

Famed media investor Mario Gabelli, who has already said he will tender his WBD shares for Paramount’s all-cash bid instead of Netflix’s deal. Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund To Cure Paralysis

Paramount Skydance’s owners David (above)and Larry Ellison and their partners at RedBird Capital are expected to immediately tell shareholders that they will commit to eventually covering the deal’s $2.8 billion breakup fee. REUTERS

WBD and Netflix have countered that the regulatory fears are overdone because so many people rely on social media and YouTube as opposed to streaming for programming. They also have argued — and will argue again in the pending regulatory filing — that they have serious questions about how Paramount Skydance is cobbling together its $78 billion bid and it goes beyond the Gulf state money.

Larry Ellison, the third-richest man in the world with a net worth of $235 billion, has committed to fully backstop the deal with a massive fortune that consists mostly of shares of Oracle. But those shares have lost more than $160 billion in value since the bidding war began in September amid a steep correction in AI related stocks.

As The Post has reported, Paramount Skydance has held early stage internal discussions about increasing its bid for the company to around $30 a share as a way to wrest control of WBD from Netflix.  Getty Images

Moreover, he’s not personally backstopping the deal, they argue, but he’s pledging assets from his “revocable” trust. Paramount Skydance says the argument doesn’t hold water because the trust is where Ellison keeps his massive net worth and has been used as a vehicle for other dealmaking.

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As The Post has reported, Paramount Skydance has held early stage internal discussions about increasing its bid for the company to around $30 a share as a way to wrest control of WBD from Netflix. 

Netflix won the bidding for the the media conglomerate after a months-long slog where WBD chief David Zaslav shopped his company, that includes the No. 1 studio Warner Bros., and No. 3 streaming service known as HBO Max as well as cable properties like CNN and Discovery to a series of major tech and media players from Apple to Amazon to Comcast and its final two bidder Netflix and Paramount Skydance.

When WBD announced Netflix as the winner, Paramount Skydance, as The Post first reported, began taking steps to launch a hostile bid that appeals directly to shareholders. Its argument centered on the superior nature of its bid — all cash versus cash and stock from Netflix — and how the Netflix offer relies on the uncertainty of equity shareholders will receive from sale of a cable assets next year since its just buying the studio and streamer from WBD.

The post Exclusive | Why Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders shouldn’t count on a holiday bidding war appeared first on Our Story Insight.

That’s the consensus from people inside the US investment group as they put the finishing touches on a new company that President Trump says satisfies a law that bans the app domestically unless it removes all vestiges of control by its Chinese parent, Bytedance.

The law was meant to prevent the Chinese government from using the short-video app for spycraft. President Trump, once a TikTok critic, did a remarkable about-face after he came to believe pro-MAGA videos helped him win over a major chunk of TikTok’s user base, which is dominated by people under the age of 25.

After President Trump saved TikTok from being banned, investors shouldn’t expect to cash in on a lucrative initial public offering anytime soon, On The Money has learned. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design

The problem is that while Trump says TikTok’s new iteration in the US is legal, it might not be later on depending on who occupies the White House. Under the bipartisan legislation approved by the Supreme Court, it’s the president that has final say over whether the deal’s current structure passes legal muster and is free of Chinese “control.”

In a few years, for instance, a Trump-hating Democratic president, say Gavin Newsom or JB Pritzker, might want to stick it to the investors who helped Trump by ruling that the law was purposely circumvented because of the way Bytedance is still involved.

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That would lead to massive liabilities for all investors including average Joes who bought shares in an IPO: they could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages given the way the ban law is written.

Informing small investors of those thorny – and possibly expensive details in IPO documents – would also lead to the mother of all disclosures and expose the weak underpinnings of the current deal’s structure, On The Money has learned.

The problem is that while Trump says TikTok’s new iteration in the US is legal, it might not be later on depending on who occupies the White House. Getty Images

“The disclosure of the liability would be enough to cast doubt on how the TikTok deal came about,” said one investor involved in the creation of the new company. “That’s why no one sees it happening.”

IPOs, of course, are a rite of passage for most normal private companies with substantial private equity or venture capital investments that want to cash in. TikTok has received financing from the likes of private equity powerhouses KKR, Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic and even tech giant Oracle.

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But even company insiders concede that TikTok’s new iteration – spinning off the US portion of its global operations into a new company – is anything but normal. Trump says the deal is legal, but the Chinese maintain a significant ownership stake in the US operations. They are also leasing to the Americans their all-important algorithm, which is both the addictive secret sauce of the platform, but also the alleged means of China’s spying capabilities.

Yes, tech giant Oracle will be able to rewrite some of the algo’s code to try and remove the spyware, but questions remain on how much anyone can clean this software, which means a president other than Trump could still deem the new structure illegal.

The post Here’s why investors shouldn’t hold their breath for a lucrative TikTok IPO appeared first on Our Story Insight.

I guess we’re doing this again. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a few posts (I’m not linking to the posts in order to protect the innocent and underpaid) about how dismal publishing salaries are, and when salary discourse in a specific industry won’t go away, it’s usually for a very good reason. Let’s do some math.

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In the year 2001, I was offered $30,000 a year for a job as an editorial assistant at an imprint of Simon & Schuster. This was supposedly lucky because the majority of my other colleagues were making $27,500 (I remember a friend who came to me all excited when she got a raise and finally made 4-figures in her bimonthly paycheck). And everyone knew that once you paid your dues your salary would increase… right?

That year I paid $975 for a room in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which was a lot but at least I could save on transportation costs by walking to work. A big fat salad from Bagelfeller deli on 48th Street was less than $9 and came with free bagel chips, and there was a place across the street from Simon & Schuster where, if you paid $10 for a happy hour drink, you could also partake in the unlimited Italian buffet they served nightly. Sorry to be starry-eyed about it, but it’s not an understatement when I tell you this way of life no longer exists.

Don’t the people on the ground working to make their corporations money deserve some of the spoils, namely a livable wage?

Even at the time, those hallowed moments of the early aughts when Manhattan was semi-affordable, entry level salaries for book workers did not quite constitute a living wage. Most of my peers had help from their parents, and I was no exception (I’m still grateful to them for bringing me cheaper groceries from the suburbs to stock my fridge). Those of us without a safety net went elsewhere pretty quickly—there were still tons of other jobs to be had. Sob.

The current entry level salary at most of the Big Five publishers tops out at around $50,000, which was supposed to be a big step forward when the 2022 strike by the HarperCollins Union paved the way for higher starting fees across the board. That is a success and should be celebrated as such!

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The problem is that, in 2025 dollars, my $30,000 salary would be around $53,462 today. According to the MIT Living Wage calculator the required annual income after taxes a single adult needs to make in order to comfortably live in New York County is $56,138.

In the early days of Covid-19 there was an opportunity to make working at a book publisher a job that could be done remotely, from more affordable cities via the magic of Zoom calls. I value my time in the S&S office too much to deny that there are benefits to being in that Midtown office, to be face-to-face with peers in meetings and to establish collegiality with coworkers. But requiring staff back at the office a few days a week on less than a livable wage when office life has grown less and less affordable is inexcusable and short-sighted.

Much has been made about how the publishing industry has grown more corporate over the past 20 years, more data-focused. Recently there’s been some debate about whether the Big Five have killed literary fiction (no, they haven’t) because they’ve turned into behemoths afraid to take on any risk. I wouldn’t go that far (there is still so much good fiction coming out of the Big Five, but also you absolutely should check out indie presses), but there’s no denying that corporate consolidation has made book publishing more of a numbers-based business and less of a sheerly creative pursuit.

When I was an editorial assistant in the early aughts, my peers and I would always threaten to leave the profession we were passionate about to go work in a regular business office, because at least the salaries were better there. Now book publishing has all of the stresses of a straight-up business job, but it’s still missing the salary.

I get it. I get that publishing is a business. I get that corporations and their shareholders like to make money first and foremost. But then don’t the people on the ground working to make their corporations money deserve some of the spoils, namely a livable wage? We book people are not nearly as bad at math as we self-deprecatingly like to say we are: it doesn’t take much special skill to realize that the numbers just don’t make any sense.

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The post As Big Publishing Gets More Corporate, Shouldn’t the Salaries Go Up? ‹ appeared first on Our Story Insight.