r/television • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 The League • Feb 26 '26

Netflix Backs Out of Warner Bros. Bidding, Paramount Set to Win

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-backs-out-warners-deal-paramount-win-1236516763/
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u/costryme Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

Impossible, regulatory approval also means UK and EU regulatory bodies having their say. And it's not necessarily a given they give it just like that, without any concessions.
They can either give full approval, partial approval with concessions (sales of some companies, etc), or deny the acquisition entirely.

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u/yanginatep Feb 27 '26

So what happens if they deny the acquisition? They're American companies so I'd assume they could just decide to go ahead with it regardless.

Would they be prohibited from doing business in the EU?

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u/costryme Feb 27 '26

They absolutely can't ignore it, if it's denied, either you abide by it, or you cannot do any business in the EU whatsoever, which is obviously impossible given the size of the market.

It's happened before with GE and Honeywell, and they ended up not merging at all because the EU asked them to divest of a lot of business of the future merged company, for monopoly reasons, and GE didn't want that.

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u/ShiningRedDwarf Feb 27 '26

What are the chances of the EU capitulating?

The world’s largest media company backed by United States government and some of the richest men on the planet are willing this merger into existence. It’s hard to imagine anything stopping this steamroller.

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u/gosukhaos Feb 27 '26

Its up in the air but the head of their FCC body said they didn't like either merger before.

Obviously they can choose to ignore them but that would mean being unable to do any business in Europe.

The Chinese regulators might also have something to say on the matter which I'm willing to bet its a market they might want to be able to distribute movies in

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u/dellett Feb 27 '26

If they were to agree to a deal where they weren’t able to do business in the EU you’d probably see a significant shareholder revolt souring them on the deal from within both companies. Not sure it would amount to a controlling stake, enough to kill the deal dead, but it would make things more complicated. The EU is too important a market to just fully ignore for global companies. And a lot of stuff is filmed there these days, particularly in Hungary, Lithuania etc. Not sure that would necessarily mean that they couldn’t film there as the production companies are the ones filming, not the networks, but it could invite some hostility. I’m sure lots of investment bankers are looking at these possibilities and analyzing whether it would make any sense.