lowell
Well-Known Member
It's actually a bipartisan effort of 8 Democratic & 2 Republican state AGs in total:
"The top lawyers for several states are drafting a legal challenge to Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., laying the groundwork for an antitrust suit over the Hollywood mega-deal.
After investigating for months whether the transaction would harm competition, senior officials in about 10 states have begun drafting a complaint and discussing logistics for filing a potential lawsuit as soon as this month to stop the merger, according to people familiar with the matter. California, which is home to the entertainment industry, has been leading the effort.
No final decisions have been made about filing or which states would join in. Most of the states that have been weighing the lawsuit are led by Democratic attorneys general although at least two Republican attorney generals are involved in the probe, according to some of the people.
Officials from California and other states have been meeting with both Paramount and opponents of the deal and sought sworn statements or testimony that could be used in a lawsuit, according to people familiar with the inquiries who also asked to not be identified.
Other than California, states with Democratic attorneys general weighing a lawsuit include Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut and New York, according to some of the people.
However, Republican attorneys general from Tennessee and Pennsylvania and the top lawyer for Massachusetts, who is a Democrat, are also involved in the probe, some of the people said.
States including California are in talks with antitrust litigators from well-known law firms about potentially working on the case, according to other people with knowledge of those discussions. The California attorney general’s office declined to comment.
The Paramount-Warner Bros. deal is also under scrutiny overseas, with the EU’s 27-nation merger watchdog setting an initial deadline of July 7 to rule on the deal. The UK’s competition authority is also investigating the deal."
Meanwhile, some non-Redstone investors get access to some deal files related to the Redstones' Paramount Global sale and departures of Special Committee members:
"A Delaware Chancery Court judge ordered Paramount Skydance Corp. to hand over some internal communications tied to the 2025 merger that created the company, handing a win to investors who suspect the deal unfairly enriched Shari Redstone at the expense of other investors.
Magistrate Judge Christian Wright on Friday concluded there was a “credible basis” to require disclosure of informal board materials such as emails related to the resignations of three members of a special committee at Redstone’s Paramount Global that reviewed the $8 billion merger deal with Skydance Media. Paramount investors filed a complaint in April 2025 demanding the records. But Wright stopped short of ordering the company to produce “officer-level materials.”
“The plaintiffs have demonstrated a credible basis to suspect potential wrongdoing in connection with the acquisition,” wrote Wright, who conducted a half-day trial in March. The judge reasoned that “the formal board materials paint an inaccurate picture of the three directors’ departure from the special committee and Redstone’s role in it, and thus fails to provide accurate details to a key event.”
The Paramount stockholders sought text messages and emails to figure out why three members of a special committee resigned at a “critical juncture in the negotiations,” according to court records. They departed soon after Redstone prevented the special committee from engaging with Apollo Global Management Inc., which made a better offer, plaintiffs attorneys wrote in a pre-trial opening brief. The plaintiffs argued it was important to know whether those individuals were forced out."
