Paramount’s Ellison backs $6 billion WBD merger “synergies” figure, says company won’t sell iconic lots
Paramount CEO David Ellison pushed back on rumors fueled by Netflix’s Ted Sarandos that the WBD merger would result in $16 billion in cuts.
Rumors have swirled about how exactly Paramount may pay back the $79 billion in debt it would be responsible for following a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Speaking with CNBC on Thursday morning, Paramount CEO David Ellison cleared some things up.
Despite potentially owning two massive lots located about 15 minutes from one another — the 3 million-square-foot Burbank lot belonging to WBD, and the 1.2 million-square-foot Paramount lot — Paramount will not sell either, according to Ellison.
“We’re going to rationalize the real estate footprint of both of these companies. We’re not going to sell either lot — those are iconic and we’re going to actually hold on to those,” the executive told CNBC in the televised interview.
According to reporting by the Los Angeles Times, Paramount plans to lease out space at its historic lot for film productions and is considering plans to develop rentable retail and commercial office space on the campus.
Ellison doubled down on the $6 billion in “synergies” figure (read: overlap from the proposed merger that could be cut) that Paramount has repeatedly thrown out.
“We will absolutely have to rationalize the overall corporate overhead of the company. But that’s not the primary driver of the synergies in the deal. We’re going to bring HBO Max and Paramount+ together. That will rationalize the tech stacks. There’s incredible savings there as well as in our cloud rationalization,” Ellison said.
In an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos implied the synergy figure was actually in excess of $16 billion.
“I want to be clear, it’s not the $16 [billion] some people have reported. It will be $6 billion in synergies,” Ellison said.
When asked about potential influence from the Trump administration on CNN, Ellison said that “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained,” stating that “it’s maintained at CBS and it’ll be maintained at CNN.” It’s worth noting that Ellison recently installed Bari Weiss to run CBS News.
“We want to be in the truth business. We want to be in the trust business. And that’s not going to change,” he said.
