AI Lowers Startup Barriers

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Larry Ellison is throwing his personal fortune behind Paramount Skydance Corp.’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., aiming to give his son’s company an advantage in a fiercely contested takeover battle with Netflix Inc.
Both suitors moved on Monday to strengthen the financial backing for their offers, though they stopped short of increasing their bids. Netflix refinanced a portion of its planned $59 billion of debt as a way to ensure a lasting investment-grade rating — a key advantage it holds over the lower-rated Paramount.
But it’s the personal guarantee of Ellison, the world’s fifth-richest person with a $246 billion fortune, that could force a rethink by Warner Bros. The board previously urged shareholders to reject Paramount’s offer in part because the billionaire father of its Chief Executive Officer David Ellison had backed the $40.4 billion of equity financing with a revocable trust that could, as the name implies, be withdrawn or amended at any time.
Paramount has been aggressively pursuing Warner Bros. for months and Ellison was taken by surprise when the board agreed to a deal with Netflix for $82.7 billion for the streaming and studio assets. The strength of the financing for each bid has emerged as a decisive issue in the takeover battle, which unleashed two massive debt-fueled offers that rank among the largest in the past decade. Paramount took its offer of $30 a share, or $108.4 billion including debt, for the entire company directly to shareholders.
Today's show features:

• Bloomberg News Media Editor Molly Schuetz and Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Credit Analyst Stephen Flynn on the latest developments in the Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war
• Que Nguyen, Chief Investment Officer, Equity Strategies with Research Affiliates on whether small- and mid-cap stocks are contributing to the bull market and how much more growth we can expect from the AI trade
• Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone on trading trends in gold and crypto
• Darrick Hamilton, University Professor, the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at the New School, on whether Trump accounts can help close the racial wealth gap in America

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