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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: Steve203 ⎊❂🐝 HONORARY
SHREWD   😊 😞
Number: of 86269 
Subject: Ellisons bum rush state governments
Date: 08/17/26 9:38 PM
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Paramount seeks $1.88 billion bond from state AGs to cover costs of WBD merger delay

The group of state attorneys general said in its initial filing that the merger would violate the Clayton Antitrust Act, which is the more-than-100-year-old law that prohibits anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions.

In a statement from a Paramount spokesperson, the company pointed to the Clayton Antitrust Act and other federal law that calls on the plaintiffs — or states in this case — being required “to post a bond covering the potential harm from halting a transaction to litigate.”

“By the time trial concludes and the parties submit their final briefs, Paramount will have paid Warner Bros. shareholders an unrecoverable $1.3 billion in ticking fees alone,” Paramount said in the filing. “Delay also threatens to nullify the regulatory approvals that Defendants have already spent months securing.”

Bonta’s office in its statement said, “Paramount and Warner Bros. are two sophisticated companies who willfully decided to include a costly ticking fee as a provision in their merger contract. They knew this merger would undergo regulatory review; they knew it was not a done deal; and they chose to include it anyway.”

cnbc.com - Paramount bond merger delay costs

As I read this, Paramount and Warner entered into a scheme that would incur costs, in the likely event the merger would be delayed, or blocked, on anti-trust grounds. The companies then use the costs incurred in that scheme to justify trying to extort states into not challenging the merger, so as to not incur the costs.

Steve
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This community has written 86,214 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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