NEW YORK (AP) — Skydance-owned Paramount is again extending the tender offer window in its $77.9 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, while doubling down on a coming proxy fight.
Warner stockholders now have until Feb. 20 to sell their shares to Paramount for $30 apiece in cash — a price that remains unchanged, giving the offer a total enterprise value of over $108 billion including debt. It marks the second extension the company has made since challenging Warner’s merger agreement with Netflix last month.
As of late Wednesday, Paramount said that more than 168.5 million Warner shares had been tendered in support of its offer. But that's still far below the 50% mark it would need to effectively gain control of Warner — which has about 2.48 billion shares outstanding in series A common stock today.
In an escalation of its hostile bid, Paramount has also promised a proxy fight. Earlier this month, the company announced plans to nominate its own slate of directors to Warner’s board before the next shareholder meeting. And on Thursday, Paramount filed preliminary materials to solicit proxies in opposition to the Netflix merger.
Warner’s board has repeatedly backed the deal it struck with Netflix, which in December agreed to buy the company’s studio and streaming business for $72 billion — now in an all-cash transaction that it says will simplify the transaction and speed up the path to a shareholder vote by April. Including debt, the enterprise value of that deal is about $83 billion, or $27.75 per share.
But Paramount has continued to argue its offer is superior. On Thursday, the company accused Warner's board of “rushing to solicit shareholder approval” for the Netflix merger, which it said could lead to a lower payout for shareholders if debt spanning from a previously-announced spinoff of Warner's networks business makes its way to studio and streaming operations.
The Associated Press reached out to Warner and Netflix for comments on Thursday.
The battle for Warner and the value of each offer grows complicated because Netflix and Paramount want different things. Netflix’s proposed acquisition includes only Warner’s studio and streaming business, including its legacy TV and movie production arms and platforms like HBO Max. But Paramount’s bid is for the entire company — which, beyond studio and streaming, includes its news and cable operations. That would put CNN under the same roof as CBS.
If Netflix is successful, Warner’s current networks would be spun off into their own company called Discovery Global, under a previously-announced separation.
Regardless of who wins the upper hand, a Warner Bros. Discovery sale could be a long, drawn-out process — likely attracting tremendous antitrust scrutiny. Politics are expected to come into play under President Donald Trump, who has made unprecedented suggestions about his personal involvement on whether a deal will go through.
Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix both fell slightly after the opening bell Thursday. Meanwhile, Paramount-Skydance inched up more than 1%.
FILE - The Warner Bros. water tower is seen at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif., Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
BAGHDAD (AP) — The decision to move prisoners of the Islamic State group from northeast Syria to detention centers in Iraq came after a request by officials in Baghdad that was welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government, officials said Thursday.
American and Iraqi officials told The Associated Press about the Iraqi request, a day after the U.S. military said that it started transferring some of the 9,000 IS detainees held in more than a dozen detention centers in northeast Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in northeast Syria.
The move to start transferring the detainees came after Syrian government forces took control of the sprawling al-Hol camp — which houses thousands of mostly women and children — from the SDF, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops on Monday seized a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, where some IS detainees escaped and many were recaptured, state media reported.
The SDF said on Thursday that government forces shelled al-Aqtan prison near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa with heavy weapons, while simultaneously imposing a siege around the prison using tanks and deploying fighters.
Al-Aqtan prison, where some IS prisoners are held, was surrounded by government forces earlier this week and negotiations were ongoing on the future of the detention facility.
With the push by government forces into northeast Syria along the border with Iraq, Bagdad became concerned that some of the detainees might become a danger to Iraq’s security, if they manage to flee from the detention centers amid the chaos.
An Iraqi security official said that the decision to transfer the prisoners from Syria to Iraq was an Iraqi decision, welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government. The official added that it was in Iraq’s security interest to detain them in Iraqi prisons rather than leaving them in Syria.
Also Thursday, a senior U.S. military official confirmed to the AP that Iraq “offered proactively” to take the IS prisoners rather than the U.S. requesting it of them.
A Syrian foreign ministry official said that the plan to transfer IS prisoners from Syria to Iraq had been under discussion for months before the recent clashes with the SDF.
All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment publicly.
Over the past several years, the SDF has handed over to Iraqi authorities foreign fighters, including French citizens, who were put on trial and received sentences.
The SDF still controls more than a dozen detention facilities holding around 9,000 IS members, but is slated to hand the prisons over to government control under a peace process that also is supposed to eventually merge the SDF with government forces.
U.S. Central Command said that the first transfer on Wednesday involved 150 IS members, who were taken from Syria’s northeastern province of Hassakeh to “secure locations” in Iraq. The statement said that up to 7,000 detainees could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities.
IS declared a caliphate in 2014 in large parts of Syria and Iraq, attracting large numbers of fighters from around the world.
The militant group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but IS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key U.S. ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating IS.
Also Thursday, the SDF accused the government of violating a four-day truce declared on Tuesday. It said Syrian government forces pounded the southern outskirts of the northern town of Kobani, which recently became besieged after the government’s push in the northeast over the past two weeks.
A commander with the Kurdish women’s militia in Syria, speaking from inside Kobani, told reporters during an online news conference that living conditions there are deteriorating.
Nesrin Abdullah of the Women’s Protection Units, or YPJ, said that if the fighting around Kobani continues, thousands of people “will be massacred.”
She said that there was no electricity or running water in the town, which a decade ago became the symbol of resistance against IS. The militants at the time besieged it for months before being pushed back.
“The people here are facing a genocide,” she said. “We have many people in hospitals and hospitals cannot continue if there is no electricity.”
Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalists Omar Sanadiki in Damascus, Syria and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
Local youth play atop of a damaged armored vehicle belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at the site of clashes with Syrian government forces in the village of al-Hol in northeastern Syria's Hasakeh province, Syria, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
