Hostile Takeover Bids Multiply After $110.9B Warner Deal Closes

A hostile bid that worked

Corporate boards usually treat hostile bids as noise they can wait out. This month showed the opposite. On October 6, 2026, Paramount Skydance completed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery at $31 per share, a deal that valued the company at $110.9 billion. The combined business now operates as Skydance.1 The deal began as an unsolicited approach. It turned into a public fight against a board that had already signed with someone else, and it ended in a full takeover. In the three weeks since it closed, contested deals have appeared in Frankfurt, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto and London. Read together, the coverage points one way: the hostile bid is back as a working tool for large deals, and the Warner fight is now the example other bidders will study.

How Paramount got there

The path was messy, and the details explain why it matters. Paramount made several unsolicited offers in the fall of 2025. That pushed WBD's board to put the company up for auction. In December 2025 the board picked Netflix's $82.7 billion offer for the studio and streaming business, and the rest of the company was to be spun off as Discovery Global.1 Three days after Netflix announced its agreement, Paramount went straight to shareholders with an all-cash offer of $30 per share, valuing WBD at about $108.4 billion in enterprise value.120

The board rejected it more than once. In December it called the offer inadequate and risky. It pointed to Paramount's credit rating, which it described as at or barely above junk, and to a market value of about $15 billion, compared with Netflix's market cap of more than $400 billion.20 In January the board rejected a revised offer as well. It argued that more than $50 billion in new debt made the deal look like a leveraged buyout, with too much dependence on lenders actually funding it at closing.1719 The board also put a number on the cost of walking away from Netflix: about $4.7 billion, or $1.79 per share, including a $2.8 billion termination fee.19

Paramount's answer was to take away each reason for saying no. Larry Ellison offered a personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing.19 In February 2026 Paramount said it would cover Netflix's $5.8 billion breakup fee and backstop WBD's debt exchange. It then raised its formal offer to $31 per share.1 Investors helped. Pentwater Capital wrote that the board had violated its fiduciary duty by rejecting Paramount without enough review, and Mario Gabelli's GAMCO said early on that it would likely tender its shares.1

The early coverage disagreed on one point: who was taking the bigger regulatory risk. Paramount argued that its deal would have an easier time with regulators. WBD's board concluded that both deals carried about the same regulatory risk.20 Neither side fully anticipated what came next. States and the Writers Guild sued, and in August Paramount asked them to post a $1.88 billion bond to cover its ticking-fee exposure. The case was settled with a consent decree. The decree requires 45-day theatrical windows and $1.5 billion of U.S. production spending over five years.1 The deal also drew heavy political scrutiny. Saudi, Qatari and Emirati sovereign wealth funds put in $24 billion through non-voting shares, and there were reports that the Ellisons promised Trump administration officials changes at CNN.117

The lesson for future bidders is simple. Rejection by the board was not the end. A bidder with very deep pockets could win by removing each objection one at a time.

The current wave: Europe and Australia

The deals now in play look a lot like that one. In Germany, Evonik is reported to be preparing to reject BASF's improved offer of €24 per share, about €11 billion. That is almost a 40% premium over Evonik's share price before takeover interest surfaced in September, and it is up from a first offer of €22.15 that Evonik turned down that month.9 BASF chief executive Markus Kamieth has promised to keep Evonik's job guarantees through 2032. He also says BASF will not do the deal at any price. People familiar with the matter say Evonik may leave room for more talks if BASF raises its offer.9 This is the usual pattern: the target rejects the first two offers while making clear that a higher one could get a hearing.

Australia is unusually busy. Challenger's board rejected an offer of A$11.80 per share from its largest shareholder, TAL Daiichi Life Australia. The offer valued the annuities provider at about A$7.8 billion, and the board said it was not at a level it could recommend.12 As with Evonik, the board said it would keep talking with the Japanese insurer.1112 At Ingenia Communities, AVID Property Group made a non-binding offer of A$5.35 per security, about A$2.2 billion, beating Warburg Pincus's A$5.25. AVID won six weeks of soft exclusivity, and Warburg lost access to the data room.2 AVID's offer requires Ingenia to drop its planned purchase of Peet. That would be a significant price for Ingenia, and its board says it has not decided that AVID's offer is superior.2

A smaller Australian fight shows the other way these contests can go. Mike Ashley's Frasers Group has called its 65-cent offer for Accent Group "best and final" after four months without a rival bid.18 Accent's board unanimously rejected the offer, which is worth about $316 million.15 Accent's directors are standing for re-election on November 20 as a vote of confidence.18 Here the bidder is refusing to raise its price and the board is asking shareholders to choose. The Warner case suggests that whoever gets shareholders on side first usually wins.

Japan, cannabis and the UK

In Tokyo, the contest for Kakaku.com has gone on for six months. EQT has raised its offer seven times, most recently to ¥3,683 per share. Bain and LY Corp have offered ¥3,700, rising to ¥3,720 if KDDI supports them.10 Japanese buyouts used to be negotiated quietly between a target and one buyer. Bankers in the reporting now expect strong assets to run auctions.10 In Canada, Curaleaf's hostile bid for Aurora Cannabis, worth about US$272 million, has turned into a fight over defensive tactics. Aurora's board recommends rejecting the revised offer. The Alberta Securities Commission dismissed Curaleaf's request to stop Aurora from selling shares through its at-the-market program.813 Aurora says most of the higher offer is paid in Curaleaf shares at an inflated value. Curaleaf says Aurora's board is keeping the highest bidder out.13

The UK numbers are the clearest evidence that this is a broad trend. Law firm White & Case found that takeovers of UK-listed companies topped £75 billion through the third quarter. That is nearly double the total for all of 2025. Hostile approaches quadrupled year on year, and overseas buyers accounted for 94% of deal value.6 The firm attributes the rise to persistently low UK valuations.6

Why it matters, and the limits

In my view, the main driver across these deals is the money behind them more than any one industry trend. Sovereign wealth funds backed the Warner deal and are behind AVID's offer for Ingenia.12 Private equity firms are in the Kakaku and UK contests.610 Debt markets are also willing to fund very large deals. The Financial Times reported that CD&R and GTCR are discussing a joint bid for Global Payments worth about $40 billion including debt. The company's market value is only about $23 billion, so a buyer would take on a lot of existing debt.5 Strategic buyers are joining these fights too, and that tends to push prices higher.10

Boards have learned to say no in a particular way. They reject the offer and keep negotiating. Challenger's response, Evonik's expected one, and the scoring zones the GrainCorp board used to judge offers all follow that approach.11915 The real question in each case is how high the next offer will go.

There are limits. Governments can still block deals: Broadcom's $117 billion hostile bid for Qualcomm ended after a presidential order on national-security grounds.4 And a determined owner can still stop a buyer. In Italy, Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio dropped his bid for the publisher of Il Fatto Quotidiano after its founding shareholders refused to sell and its board refused to open its books.14 Paramount won by spending more money and outlasting the board. Most of the bidders now in play will be measured against that example, though few of them have the Ellisons' resources.