This is proving to be a landmark moment for the Ellison family. Earlier this week, veteran tech pioneer Larry Ellison, of Austin-based software and AI champion Oracle, became the world’s richest person, outdoing Elon Musk.
In parallel, his son, David Ellison – film producer-turned-movie mogul as chairman of Paramount Skydance – was marshalling resources for a tilt at £24billion Warner Bros Discovery.
The target is the home of productions such as Barbie, DC Comics, Harry Potter and fabled cable channel CNN.
The pace of change in entertainment is calling for radical solutions. A multiplicity of streaming channels seeks to compete with trailblazer Netflix and relative newcomers Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime.
Consumers have more choices than in living memory, but it has also trapped viewers into a bewildering cycle of sign-ups to ever more subscriptions. They are easily accumulated but not so simply unwound. Traditional Hollywood studios such as Paramount+ are on the back foot. The Ellison family, in an echo of Rupert Murdoch in an earlier cable age, spotted an opportunity to clean up.
The ink barely is dry on the merger of David Ellison’s Skydance with Paramount. He has lost no time in taking aim at Warner Bros Discovery. The latter is in flux with chief executive David Zaslav seeking to modernise by doing the splits. One arm would focus on legacy cable channels and the other on the growth sector of streaming and studios as part of an effort to release value. Paramount Skydance is crashing the party and wants the whole caboodle, including vast debts.
In pole position: Earlier this week, Larry Ellison became the world’s richest person, outdoing Elon Musk
The scale of the Ellison move puts the efforts of ITV chief executive Carolyn McCall to secure the future of the UK broadcaster’s brilliant studios through a transforming deal into some perspective.
Any deal between Paramount and Warner, both with storied histories, would attract anti-trust scrutiny.
But with so many big beasts in the production, cable and streaming space, including Disney and Sky-owner Comcast, there may be less to fear from regulators. The Trump White House would not be disappointed to see CNN, regarded as an enemy of the state, under fresh stewardship.
Paramount Skydance, backed by a family fortune, will offer cash. That will be hard for investors to resist.
Keeping schtum
Rachel Reeves looks to have rediscovered the art of purdah, the silence which once prevailed ahead of budgets. The Office for Budget Responsibility is deep in forecasting mode, seeking to determine prospects for UK productivity and growth.
So the Chancellor left it to her Treasury team to explain why there was zero growth in July.
It spuriously claimed credit for five interest rate cuts since Labour came to office, even though the independent Bank of England sets rates.
It also trumpets the highest rate of growth in the G7. By the time the year is done, the United States will be top of the table, as usual.
Reality is that the Bank will be held back from cutting rates further next week, in contrast to a likely reduction by the US Federal Reserve.
Britain has a pesky inflation rate of 3.8 per cent – almost twice the target set by the Treasury. The latest output figures also show a slump in pharma output.
That’s not terribly helpful in a week when the industry’s trade body suggested the UK is becoming uninvestable.
Small wonder Reeves, under the beady eye of Number 10, is keeping her powder dry.
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