DOJ leadership signed off on the $111 billion Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery deal on June 12 without their own antitrust staff finishing their review. Career investigators had spent months on the case and were leaning toward recommending a lawsuit to block it. The deal is expected to close in Q3.
The investigating team reportedly didn’t participate in writing the final clearance statement. Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi said in March the review wasn’t being fast-tracked for political reasons.
What Paramount gets: a combined Paramount+/HBO Max streaming platform that the DOJ says offers consumers a “more robust competitive alternative” to larger offerings. The deal includes planned layoffs at the merged company. Financing draws on sovereign wealth funds, a structure the EU is now scrutinizing separately. At $111 billion, it’s a bigger bet than AT&T’s $85 billion Time Warner purchase, which the DOJ also challenged in court and lost.
California, New York, and other state attorneys general plan to file suit in the coming weeks. That’s the same move states made against Live Nation when the Trump DOJ dropped out of that antitrust case mid-trial. A federal jury ruled in April that Live Nation and Ticketmaster operate an illegal monopoly. States don’t need the DOJ’s permission to fight a deal.
The approval carried zero divestitures and zero behavioral remedies. Clean greenlight, messy process.
Diana Kowalski