Neil Freiman

Elon Musk tried to take over Twitter against the wishes of its board of directors.

Eventually, they acquiesced, and Elon Musk acquired Twitter.

JetBlue tried to take over Spirit in a hostile takeover in 2022 as well.

Microsoft, all the way back in 2008, tried to launch a hostile bid for Yahoo.

The hostile bids are not so common in the big media industry because it's kind of clubby and all of the CEOs know each other.

So when there's a takeover attempt, it's usually pretty friendly.

Brian Roberts, who's the CEO of Comcast, tried to do a hostile takeover at Disney in 2004.

That did not fare well.

So what Paramount is doing is going is trying to sidestep the board of directors from Warner Brothers, who said no to Paramount and said yes to Netflix.

And they're saying, look, we're going to give you an all cash thirty dollars per share offer.

Take it or leave it.

If they sell 51 percent of outstanding shares, then Paramount will eventually own the company.

And that's what is on the table right now for 20 days.

It's called the tender offer.

It's open Friday.

For 20 business days, any Warner Brothers shareholder can sell their shares to Paramount at $30 a share.

Of course, a lot of stuff could happen in between.

Then there could be lawsuits.

Netflix could also raise its bid and come in with a counter offer to counter what Paramount just launched.

So it could get very, very messy.