The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved a Paramount Skydance request to allow foreign investors to back a $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).
On Sept. 17, the FCC said it was waiving the 25 percent cap on foreign equity ownership, allowing individual investors to own up to 20 percent of the equity.
It also said foreign investors can have no voting stock and “will not have any influence, direction, or control over or provide any commentary or guidance on Paramount’s content decisions, company management.”
“A combined Paramount–WBD will have the scale and resources necessary to compete, invest, innovate, and deliver premium content to audiences worldwide,” Paramount said.
Paramount Skydance Corporation was formed in 2025 when Skydance Media merged with Paramount Global.
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Paramount said that when the deal closes, the Ellison family, led by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and RedBird Capital Partners will collectively hold the largest equity stake in the combined company and 100 percent of the voting shares, with no other equity participant having any governance rights.
The FCC said Middle Eastern investors could own about 85 percent of the equity in Paramount after the deal closed, including 15.1 percent for the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
Paramount said sovereign wealth funds would own 38.5 percent after the deal closed.
Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said in a Sept. 18 post on X that the “FCC just let some of the most repressive governments in the world indirectly control nearly all of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros.”
“An investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity; it secures influence over what gets said and what gets made,” she added.
California and 11 other states filed an antitrust lawsuit on July 13 against the Paramount Skydance–WBD merger, asking the court to permanently block the $110 billion deal.
“[Paramount Skydance CEO] David Ellison may think this is an offer we can’t refuse,” Bonta told reporters while standing in Griffith Park, with the iconic Hollywood sign behind him. “But I’m here to say, he’s wrong.”
A coalition of Democratic attorneys general joined the lawsuit from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington state.
Paramount responded to the lawsuit, calling it a “misrepresentation of competition in the entertainment industry today.”
Paramount could be mulling leaving California.
Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s top legal officer, said the Los Angeles-based company is “committed” to staying in California. But he also noted that the company has “a fiduciary duty to shareholders.”
Reuters, Andrew Moran, and Jill McLaughlin contributed to this report.
