Trump admin skeptical of WBD asset purchase deal
The Trump administration views the proposed $72 billion deal for Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery‘s film and streaming assets with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday morning.
Netflix said Friday that it would acquire Warner Bros.’ film studio and streaming service, HBO Max. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said, “This deal looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare.”
“A Netflix-Warner Bros. would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market — threatening to force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk,” Warren said in a statement.
“Under Donald Trump, the antitrust review process has also become a cesspool of political favoritism and corruption,” Warren said. “The Justice Department must enforce our nation’s anti-monopoly laws fairly and transparently — not use the Warner Bros. deal review to invite influence-peddling and bribery.”
Paramount Skydance had made multiple bids for the entirety of WBD, as opposed to a subset of the company’s assets.
Paramount’s final bid, which was received Thursday evening, was for $30 per share, all cash, CNBC previously reported.
Comcast also made a bid for WBD’s film and streaming properties.
The New York Post on Thursday reported that, “Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison met with Trump officials and key lawmakers in Washington DC on Wednesday to press his case against Warner Bros. Discovery’s potential selection of Netflix as its merger partner.”
Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, is close to President Donald Trump.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount, in a letter to lawyers for WBD, had warned that a sale to Netflix likely would “never close” because of regulatory challenges in the United States and overseas.
“Acquiring Warner’s streaming and studio assets ‘will entrench and extend Netflix’s global dominance in a matter not allowed by domestic or foreign competition laws,’ Paramount’s lawyers wrote,” the Journal reported.
Netflix’s purchase of WBD’s assets is expected to close, if approved by regulators, after WBD completes its previously planned spinout of Discovery Global, which is currently planned to occur in the third quarter of 2026.
Discovery Global would include the CNN, TNT Sports and Discovery channels.
A Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows that Netflix agreed to pay a $5.8 billion reverse break-up fee if the deal does not receive approval.
CNBC requested comment from Netflix, WBD, Paramount, and Comcast.
Trump, even before taking office for his first term in the White House, opposed a deal by AT&T to buy Time Warner, saying “it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.”
After he took office, the Department of Justice in November 2017 sued in an effort to prevent the merger.
The DOJ lost that lawsuit, and the merger was closed in June 2018.
Before the 2024 presidential election, Trump opposed the then-proposed sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel of Japan. But after reentering the White House in January, Trump in June signed an executive order approving the merger, after the companies signed a national security agreement with the U.S. government.
The agreement gave the U.S. government a “golden share” in the merged company, which Trump claims gives a president “total control.”
Experts said the share gives the government an outsized say in corporate governance.
Correction: A senior administration official said the Trump administration views the deal with ‘heavy skepticism.’ A previous version mischaracterized the official.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.
