March 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has signaled that the watchdog will not seek to block Paramount’s $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros and played down competition concerns over a combination of CBS and CNN, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Carr told FT at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday that concerns had been raised in Washington about the concentration of power stemming from Warner Bros’ previously agreed deal with Netflix, but added that the market share implications of a potential Paramount purchase were “drastically different.”
Paramount signed the $110 billion, or $31-per-share, deal for Warner Bros last week, after Netflix declined to raise its offer.
The acquisition will be funded by $47 billion in equity from the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners, with additional debt commitments of $54 billion from Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo.
“All the information that I’ve seen about that foreign debt . . . is that would qualify under FCC rules as what we call bona fide debt, meaning, it would be a very quick, almost pro forma review,” Carr told FT.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have raised concerns that any deal to acquire Warner Bros could result in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers while cinema operators are concerned that combining large Hollywood studios could cost jobs and reduce the number of movies released in theaters.
Carr described the competition in the sector as generally “very robust” and said that “we’re looking at changes from a regulatory perspective to try to encourage more investment and more scale in broadcast.”
U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Paramount and WBD did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
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