"Netflix Is DONE!" - Inside Paramount’s HOSTILE TAKEOVER In Warner Bros War

So, we got Netflix that tries to buy Time Warner for $72. Then you got Ellison comes out with Hassel take over $108 billion offer. David Ellison yesterday says, do you have that clip that he says he promised White House sweeping changes at CNN? I don't know if you have that clip or not, but.

Here he is talking about his conversation with the president about the murder.

Got it. So watch this here, folks.

This is David Ellison trying to buy time. Go for it. A couple of real quick things before we wrap up. I mean, CNN, I assume you would combine the news gathering operation with CBS's if in fact you did own that asset.

Yeah. So look, we've been really clear since by last time we're here, what we want to do with news, which is we want to build a scaled news service that is basically fundamentally in the trust business that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle. And we believe that by doing so, that is for us kind of doing well while doing good,

and we believe in that business model, and we believe it's essential.

And do you think the president embraces the idea of you being the owner of CNN,

given his criticism, obviously, for that network in the past. By the way we've had great conversations with the president about this but I think what but I don't want to speak for him in any way shape or form.

Got it so Tom what do you know about what's going on because you just showed me something right before we went live. What's going on here with this deal.

Well right now this is like an auction going back and forth. But unlike an auction where we all sit around a table and we all have a number that we hold up, maybe we bid for a baseball card or a rare car or a piece of artwork at an auction, right now it plays out in the media and you have two bidders that are now in an auction

for Warner Brothers Discovery. On one hand you got Paramount, which of course is Skydance and the Ellison's we just heard from David Ellison and the other side you have Netflix and right now Netflix put a bid up and The the good folks Warner Brothers Discovery. So we like that bid. We're gonna take it. We're gonna work with you

Exclusively and Paramount said wait a minute. We don't think that this was a fair process So we're not gonna sue you but we're gonna say this attention shareholders We're offering you $30 a share and that's called a hostile and then people respond to it such as this guy Mario Gabelli who runs Gabelli asset management 31 billion under management. This guy's a player. He's worth two billion dollars Well known he's like 82 years old, but 31 billion under management.

He came out and he said, hey, I have bought a good amount of Warner Brothers Discovery that's owned by many of the people that I'm managing their money. And I have to tell you, we like the $30 a share offer and I'm inclined to take that.

And this is exactly, and then they find out, okay, how much does he own? Three and a half percent. Okay, well we got three and a half percent now voting for it. So now this is going to play out, and this is what the hostile does. Now you've got people saying, I'm behind the Paramount hostile offer. I want $30 a share, not the $27 a share. And now the question is, is is Netflix gonna get behind it

Where are you gonna get all this debt and all of a sudden some names popped up here? We go Jared Kushner said I've got plenty of friends and we've got money from Saudi funds he didn't say PIF but people assume it was the Saudi PIF fund and he spoke up then a consortium of large institutional investors from, tell me we've heard this word, Qatar and Saudi and... Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi came up and said, well, we've got plenty of money and we could put it behind. So all of a sudden, it's like you're at a gang fight and five guys with a lot of

money stand up behind Ellison and Skydance and says, we're backing him up. You have two guys going to fight in the street, Pat. Hey man, I'll kick your butt. Who's backing you up? And all of a sudden, these guys stand up, we're backing him up. And that's kind of what you have here. Now you've got him, people saying, do you have the ability to do this at 31 share? That and more. So that's where we are right now. But it's very interesting. This is how the hostile takeovers work. And you got guys like Mario Gabelli going to the microphone and saying, I'll take the hostile offer. It's better for my shareholders.

Yeah. So Saudi, Qatar and Abu Dhabi are going to put up24 billion, which is 2x what Ellison's are putting up $11.8 billion for the takeover. And having Kushner involved, this is, Tom, this is almost making it, so then here's the question. You're in the Netflix boardroom. Netflix just a week ago, not even a week ago, four days ago, three days ago, they're like,

this is over. We're picking it up. They came out of nowhere. We're going to whether they're celebrating, yes, we're going to get all this new stuff on Netflix now from Time Warner, it's going to be a great catalog. What do you do now if you're Netflix?

Who you calling? What influence do you have? Who's on your side? Who are you going to call guys, it's over?

You got to ask yourself if you're Netflix, how bad do we really want this asset at this point? How, I mean, we want it bad, but are we willing to pay this much to get it? And what was the price really going to be to us in terms of operational leverage and the interest on debt that we're going to have to pay.

We want this bad, but do we want to pay that kind of a price long-term to operate it? That's the question for Netflix. You know, as everybody has looked around, I mean, the rational eyes in the room, and I think I'm among them, have said, you know what? I kind of like Warner Brothers Discovery here with Paramount. I kind of like Netflix, which is now very huge.

And I kind of like Disney. And I kind of like the three of them competing each other for the consumer. I kind of like that. I'm not sure I want Netflix to get even bigger. So I think I'm one of the rational guys, in my opinion.

You know what I would be looking at right now from Netflix? I'd be looking at Bob Iger, okay? Because the perfect case study is, who has done this in the past before? Or it's only one guy. And that's Iger. What did Iger do?

He bought Star Wars. He bought this. He bought Marvel. He bought everybody, right? How did that do? Did it work out? Maybe it did work out. Maybe it's the woke stuff that didn't work out for them. You know, but when you think about what's in the Time Warner catalog, top three largest library in Hollywood, okay, you got DC Universe, you got Harry Potter, you got Lord of the

Rings, The Hobbit, The Matrix, Mad Max, The Conjuring Universe universe Stephen King's library elements Godzilla Lego movies Creed Then you have the old-school stuff the Wizard of Oz Casablanca singing in the rain rebel would have caused Ben Hur and then you have the HBO cuz that comes with it as well Game of Thrones Which is legendary soprano succession the wire euphoria true detective sex and the city curb your enthusiasm board Walk Empire and then you have a couple other things. You got Real Sports, Hard Knocks,

decades of award-winning documentaries that HBO has done. On top of that, you get Friends, the series. You get The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, ER, West Wing, Gilmore Girls, Pretty Little Liars, Supernatural, Two and a Half Men, and then additional, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Final Destination, Nightmare on Elm Street, Rush Hour, Blade.

By the way, if I keep going here, you're going to sit there and say, are you freaking kidding me? So how many chances is Netflix going to get to buy a catalog this big that they just fit into it?

Well, this is why, one, and this is why it's now a public hostile takeover with an open bid.

Are you saying it's done?

I don't think it's done. I think ultimately, ultimately, Paramount wins because they're in startup mode and they'll be more willing to take a little bit of pain and go forward. And I believe Ellison is a longer term thinker. And I just don't think that Netflix is going to be able to stomach the price. And then and then now

you handicap this fight. Federal Trade Commission. I think this is done, Tom, because of one comment Trump made. I think this deal is done. It's going to Paramount. I think it's done. Don't let me tell you what the comment was. Trump made that one comment and said, look, I had a great meeting with Ted. It was phenomenal. Ted Sarandos from Netflix. He's a very smart guy. However, they're going to have to look into if this still can even get done because they're going to get too big, too powerful. So if I'm on the Netflix side, Netflix is sitting there saying, will they even allow

us to buy it? FTC? Will Brandon Carr, is that the guy that runs FTC? Am I saying it correctly, Rob? Will they even allow this thing to happen? And is Brandon Carr going to side with us at Netflix?

Are they going to side with Ellison's? Because look what Ellison said. What did he say? He said we want to focus on the 70% of Americans that want the truth and they want it to be fair not the 30% that's looking for what? you know

hysteria and you know Whatever kind of reporting they want to go back to that. And who loves, not like, but love hearing that. Yeah, I think, of course they love hearing that. And you know who's probably sitting on the sidelines worried about Ellison's picking it up? A company that's been dominating for two decades, Fox News.

Fox News, because you don't think secretly Trump would like Fox News to have competition? You don't think Trump wants Fox to have some kind of competition? Because nobody knows what's going to happen with Murdoch's kids. Nobody knows what Lachlan's going to do.

We've seen his angle and he ain't his dad.

What do you think about this, Stan? Do you have an opinion on this?

Oh yeah, well, I'm a big believer in succession never works out like your plan man pans God laughs and so getting back to Murdoch the He thinks that the oldest son that is apparently the winner of the battle is gonna do what he wants He may do what he wants while he's still alive But that doesn't mean he's gonna do what he wants the old man when the old man's gone The and I wouldn't be surprised if somehow Murdoch didn't stick his thumb in this deal.

But I said that if you remember back about four or five months ago, there was an MMA fight, the president, it was Elon Musk on one side of the president and the head of the Saudi sovereign fund on the other side of the president. And they were whispering, whatever they were whispering, and the future is coming from the Middle East. You know even though I think that Dubai is Las Vegas without slot machines, they're going to have slot machines someday and they have all the money in the world and then some and

they're not even tapping their real wealth. So the and the other thing is that the Middle Eastern, after being partners with the Kuwaiti government, the Al Sabahs, for almost 10 years, they're 50, 100-year planners. They're not planning for the next quarter. And they know someday in 3,000 years,

they're going to run out of oil, not in 30 years or 50 years. And so that's why there's been such a outflow of money and they've been building up the Middle East so rapidly.

Do you think they're doing it purely, do you think Tom, Dan, do you think they're doing it purely for investment purposes or do you think they're doing it also to have some influence? Because I wonder what level of influence you think that's what it is?

So what, give me an ideal three things that they would like this new media platform do as influence to highlight Saudi to help Qatar and to help Abu Dhabi. What does that look like? Okay, one, like Al Jazeera, you know, uh, and they, they look at whatever happens in the Middle East where they are not such a biased eye. I'm not saying it's not biased the other way, but they're going to get positive influence around the world in the media, and they need that.

The next generation of Middle Eastern managers, when you get outside the top two or three guys are young guys. Someday they say there's going to be a a young gal there but I don't believe that. They're young guys and so they think very much like this young man does about things differently than we think or at least my generation thinks. So they're gonna get a different flavor and they need that going forward but they're not concerned what happens in the next 50 years. They're concerned

what's gonna happen in the next hundred years. And right now there's no US investor that I'm aware of that is concerned about the next hundred years. They're concerned about the next quarter. Do you think it's investment or do you think it's influence? If they're gonna be you know 12 billion you know of the 24 billion they're kicking in 12 billion and the they're kicking in 24 billion and Ellison's family is putting 11.8 billion. Do you think they're gonna be having some sort of influence?

Hey, we want you to make us look better. We want you to make us look

Grandi with the Middle East Middle East is becoming the Silicon Valley of capitalists, which I wanted to discuss. So you asked the question, is it business? Is it marketing?

What was the question? The other day I bought into this company that we talked about on the podcast a few months ago. Tom and I called them, boom, deal is done, money's in, we're happy. But it's an investment. I'm not looking for this influence

Do you think they're just sitting there saying? We want to put some money there and diversify 24 billion because we think in the next 10 years that 24 billion is gonna be 100 billion dollars or do you think they're putting 24 billion saying hey man, you better make us look good as well

Sometimes don't be too harsh on us. Don't be too harsh on Qatar Saudi and Abu Dhabi? Well, it's a little bit of both because if you look at it from this perspective of who's actually running the Middle East, this article was written by CNBC conveniently left out who's arguably the undisputed champion of the Middle East when it comes to Silicon Valley, which is Israel. All these other countries, whether it's Saudi, whether it's the UAE, whether it's you mentioned Kuwait, whether it's any of these Middle's the UAE, whether it's you mentioned Kuwait, whether it's any of

these Middle East and Gulf countries, they have number their number one only export is oil and gas. That's it. That's all they got. What Israel is doing is actually building tech, technology, water, you mentioned water, what Israel is doing with water and desalinating water is going to save the Middle East a lot of countries talk about peace deals, a lot of these deals are going to be framed. We need water because we're

in the freaking desert and we're all thirsty as hell and we're going to need Israel. So a lot of these countries are going to have to use this for survival and forget their jihadi tendencies. So as far as diversification, you can't just rely on oil because in the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, how much the world is going to run on oil? Significantly less, right? Going green, green technology.

So they're diversifying. The other component is, yes, they do want to modernize. They want to enter the modern world. They don't want to be left in the Middle Ages or the Stone Ages when Muhammad was running around. They need to step into the middle, into the modern world

and compete. So a lot of these countries, their only foundation is oil and they need to diversify and have other things going on.

Tom.

So, well, I appreciate the segue to Israel, but to focus on just these investors here coming on the Netflix deal, there's a little of both going on. They got into F1. There's like three races that are out there on the peninsula now, fantastic tracks. A lot of Western people that are there,

incredible hospitality. I've talked to a lot of people that were there. I'd like to go to one. And then you've got what they did with Live Golf and you see how Doha's being built. We just talked about the housing in Doha. I did more research after the podcast yesterday

and it's only five hours from London. So it is a short drive. It takes you less time to get to Doha from Southern Europe, Pat, than it would take us from LA to get to Honolulu. So it's actually a convenient place to go

and it's clean, it's new, it's all kinds of things going on. They are doing three things. They've been westernifying up to a point, come here, enjoy yourself, bring your dollars, but you know on the back end it's still Muslim country. They have been, some people called it sport washing, you know instead of whitewashing, sport washing by investing in all the sport to bring people there, but they've also been investing.

This is not their first investment. A PIF put a giant amount of money into WeWork. PIF money is in, I believe, in Uber, very large amount in Uber. Check me on this before Uber went public. And so, number one,

they're increasingly shrewd investors, Pat. But in this case, there is also the opportunity to carry messaging to say hey there's nothing wrong with Jetta, there's nothing wrong with Doha, come on over here enjoy yourself be part of it. So if I had to split it I'm probably thinking I'm gonna go one third two thirds. Two thirds it's investment because at their core they're pretty astute business people

and one third it absolutely, they'd like to influence perceptions through programming, like product placement. And then they'd also directly like to influence news.

It also comes down to leadership. Look what MBS is doing in Saudi. I mean, we were at the American Business Forum put on by Mayor Francis Suarez, who we talked about earlier.

With PIF money.

It was all sponsored by the Saudi PIF fund. So they're modernizing, and every country wants two things, peace and prosperity. And the Middle East has been ransacked by a lack of peace and a lack of prosperity.

So leaders like MBS and the Kingdom of UAE, say we need to do what we can to basically have that in our country.

What's Ray Dalio saying here, Rob?

I thought Ray Dalio was talking about capitalism in the Middle East.

Yeah, he's talking about Saudi Arabia and how it's slowly becoming the new Silicon Valley.

Is this what Adam quoted earlier? Is there anything unique in there outside of that or that's pretty much it?

I think his take is, sorry Adam, a little bit better.

Whose? I think his take is, sorry, Adam, a little bit better. Who's?

Play race time.

As you say, I've been coming here for 32 years, so I've watched it evolve from the founder, Sheikh Zayed, to his children. And I think it is a the closest thing we get to a paradise in a world that's increasingly in trouble. And they have a great investment management expertise because they have lots of money that they manage for themselves. But when it's coming to money management that creates a community in which other investment managers come here and it creates this vibe like a Silicon Valley of investing. So this statement of capital of capital is not just a buzzword, you know, or a slogan.

It is that if you want to be in almost the Silicon Valley of investment management, there's an excitement to being here. And it's particularly enhanced by the combination with AI. You know I would say these are the two biggest commitments. We think of Abu Dhabi as being oil and of course it is. But really now asset management because of the amount of assets they have and how they're doing it and also AI because of the commitment that they There you go.

I almost asked Ray Dalio what his point was, but I just I want to refrain from doing anything like that on this.

He's been saying a lot of crazy stuff lately. I don't know how much credibility I give that. The stuff he's been saying about China, I don't know. I don't think there's anything.

You're questioning Ray Dalio's credibility?

I am. I know that sounds a bit absurd, because he's the most successful hedge fund manager of all time. I know that the Middle East is deeply worried about their dependence on oil, and he's making it sound like they're much more successful in tech and tourism than they actually are.

It's very simple. How much of his net worth, Rob, can you find out how much of Ray Dalio's net worth is tied to China and is tied to, here he was talking about who?

The Middle East.

Saudi and the Middle East.

Is he talking Middle East or is he talking specific? He was being very specific about Abu Dhabi. I've been coming here for 32 years. I knew the prince.

That's how he started. So can you say how much of Ray Dalio's network is tied to China and Abu Dhabi?

How much is he investing into that? Let's see.

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. How much is he investing into that? Which, by the way, let's see, because to me, I don't know if I see that as a, let's zoom in a little bit, $15 billion to Nathan, okay. For example, Turnover Bridge, we've reportedly managed about $7.5 billion in China-specific

funds, okay, but that's his firm, attempts to manage a billion dollars in China. We've always known that. As far as Abu Dhabi has spoken positively about the regional potential. Public sources do not break down the network tie. The three billion dollar figure of Chinese businesses refers to investments in Chinese business but doesn't necessarily reflect current value. Okay, all right. So, you know, Ray, Tom, what are your thoughts on what Ray just said there?

Well, he started, I cling to, first of all, I'm not Team Dalio one way or the other. And what I heard a guy say, I heard a couple things. Number one, I've been here for a while, and so I know what I'm talking about. I've seen the evolution and the new generation. Number two, he said it's the Silicon Valley,

it's not becoming Silicon Valley, he was using Silicon Valley metaphor, it's become a Silicon Valley of money management and investing, which I think is correct. And he says they have a lot of their own money. And so the first thing they do is they've been managing the home team, is what I heard him say, managing their own money.

Now does he have a lot invested there? Well, we don't know. But for Bridgewater to succeed, it probably has to be a global fund. It can't just be an isolationist fund. And so he's probably, you know, being nice to his hosts, because wherever is he sitting when he said these nice words, and he's probably being nice to some of his investments, because I think there's a zero chance that he has zero invested.

And so I think that he knows what he's talking about. They have managed their money very, very well. They do manage their money first. And and yes some of the things he says can be a little wonky but that's what I read from what he said I didn't see anything that I would say wait a

minute we we love Christmas and our Christmas merch is officially out and the hat that we couldn't keep a single one of these guys were ordering 50 of these at a time. Rob, can you zoom in on that hat? This hat was such a massive hit last year. We sold 3,000 of them like this, they were gone.

And people were buying it as Christmas gifts for others, and then they were sending it to their clients, their friends. It says, Merry Christmas, future looks bright on the bottom and on the side with the VT logo. It's just a sick hat We got a few hats one of the hats sold out this one that says Merry Christ Christmas this one sold out this one's gone But you have the red one you have the green one to choose from and then that one as well Rob you have this one

This other one we have as well if you want to go to this one Rob this Christmas on the bottom, right? Yeah right there and then we have the Christmas if you want to go and show Vinny our model folks look at our models wearing their and these come with a nice look at this look at this this is the that's the pajamas right the Merry Christmas pajamas the obvious way the future looks bright they're so so comfortable. Super, super comfortable. Forget about the socks Vinny's wearing that made it in there.

Those socks don't come with it. No. But they're modeling. They look like a beautiful family. So if you want your whole family to be wearing the pajamas, the Merry Christmas, we also got these sweaters here as well.

Max's truck is in there.

The ugly sweater. This is sick. sick, go to VTMerch.com, place your order. And we decided for everybody that does it, we just order a few thousand of these. You're going to get the Valuetainment Merry Christmas ornament that we're going to give to you. And the Valuetainment future looks bright. Santa Claus, Merry Christmas.

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Merry, Merry Christmas to you.