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We participated in a half-hour conference call with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and four other state attorneys general on Monday, where Bonta was questioned about the state’s scrutiny of Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD). We have published numerous, comprehensive reports on the acquisition since Paramount made its final, accepted offer in February; shortly after Paramount’s offer, we reported that California’s Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the WBD deal. Our coverage of Paramount is here, and our coverage of WBD is here.
Law enforcement officials in California are continuing to investigation Paramount’s proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of rival entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and could challenge the matter in court at some point in the near future.
On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state continues to weigh a possible antitrust lawsuit against Paramount, which would combine several film and television production facilities in the state and other businesses, including cable networks.
“There are red flags everywhere for us,” Bonta told reporters on a conference call, which was focused largely on antitrust cases brought by his state and several others. “We’re looking at things like higher prices, lower wages, fewer jobs, less quality, less choice, less competition — the things that you look at when you’re looking at an antitrust case and a proposed merger.”
Bonta said California has not decided whether to seek a legal challenge to the merger, but affirmed the state still has plenty of time to do so as the investigation continues. State officials are monitoring how regulators at the federal level and in Europe are scrutinizing the deal, and California has examined cooperating with attorneys general in other states on a possible lawsuit, he said.
“This is not a done deal,” Bonta said. “It has not cleared regulatory scrutiny…we have time to make a decision. We’ll make a decision when it’s timely, when we are able to reserve our rights and if we decide to move forward challenge the merger.”
Paramount outbid Netflix to emerge as the winner of WBD in February, a few months after Netflix made a previously-accepted but since rescinded offer to acquire WBD except for its cable networks. The combined Paramount-WBD is expected to rival larger streaming operations like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video, where currently the individual streaming platforms of each company dwarfs others in size and reach.
