Caroline Hyde

And finally, Paramount, the one who kicked all of this off.

They're the only bidders who have actually made a play for the whole company.

We're hearing that their offer is also completely cash.

They have backing from Larry Ellison, David Ellison, you know, some of the wealthiest people on earth.

And Middle Eastern money, as well as Apollo, are putting in some of the financing for their offer.

And it feels as though that's been the narrative, that the Ellison bid might be one that is more approved of by the administration.

But are there any blockers?

Are there any issues from a regulatory perspective for Paramount Skydance just getting any bigger or any of these players getting any bigger?

Yes.

So the Warner Brothers board is really I mean, they are in a position where they have lots to assess, but it's not apples to apples because they're evaluating, you know, a bid for the whole company in cash, a bid that might include stock and cash, but only for part.

And then, you know, other structures that are unclear.

For Paramount and Comcast, there's clearly lots of synergies that they could achieve by combining the companies, but there's a view that doing that, you know, to achieve those synergies, they would cut a lot of jobs, maybe thousands of jobs at the studios by combining these studios.

Netflix, their argument might be, we're not going to do something like that, and so it'll play better, you know, with labor unions and regulators, but...

Netflix also already has a lot of power, so it's a big wild card to see how the regulators are going to view that.

Yeah, many are going to say, is YouTube being counted in the numbers?

How we think about this from a regulatory perspective, from a state and federal perspective?

Timeline, any sort of idea?

We're hearing that they want to get this sorted before the end of the year.

And that makes some sense because for the banks who are underwriting the loans, they don't want the loans on their books at the year end because it's going to cost them a lot more money, which means the bidders won't be able to pay as much for these assets.

So we've heard that there's a deadline of before the holidays.