Ed Ludlow

It looks as though Chinese money is now being put to one side, but Middle Eastern money coming to the fore and Jared Kushner's money, private equity at least, which is also backed by Middle Eastern money coming to the fore.

Yes, the Middle Eastern money is probably the most interesting part of it because there had been a report, you know, at this point, maybe a month ago in Variety, the Hollywood trade publication, saying that there were three prominent Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds involved in the Paramount bid.

Paramount initially didn't really engage, then later that day said that the report was inaccurate, and then it turns out the report looks like it was pretty accurate.

Because yes, I had heard and they have since disclosed that you do have a lot of Middle Eastern money in this bid, and there had been Chinese money, which makes it even more interesting that one of Paramount's arguments is that they will have an easier time getting this deal approved

But Warner Brothers Discovery's perspective was, well, it's actually making our life more complicated if you have all of this foreign money, because then CFIUS might have to look at it and approve it.

Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, who's led the team on this story every step of the way.

Thank you so much.

Let's continue the conversation with Brandon Katz, Greenlight Analytics Director of Insights and Content Strategy.

Lucas did a really good job in explaining the differences in structure of the deals and also the different perspectives of each party.

But I wondered if you'd help our audience understand what the difference is between a Netflix joined with Warner Brothers Discovery's streaming and studio business versus a Paramount Skydance taking the entire thing.

What does that look like?

You and Lucas have already done a great job, so I'll try to pitch in here.

Really WBD and Paramount, more redundancies, more overlap.

They are both traditional TV and film companies with streaming services tacked on.

Whereas Netflix, obviously, as we know, famously or infamously, depending on your perspective, they are a streaming first at all costs company.

So there's less overlap and far more new integration of potentially complimentary or potentially conflicting businesses.

Now, we have seen mega mergers of this nature in the past, but they have almost always been a like versus like company absorbing each other.

We have not really seen a major, major streaming service take a company at the size of Warner Brothers Discovery just yet.

Brendan, we're going later in the program to go deep on the antitrust considerations.

There are antitrust considerations here.