David Ellison has been on a spending spree since he took over Paramount a few weeks ago: He has shelled out $7 billion for the rights to stream the UFC; struck a deal with the star producers behind “Stranger Things,” and secured the rights to a “Call of Duty” movie.
That list doesn’t include the $1.5 billion deal Paramount did with the creators of “South Park,” which was finalized before Ellison took control, but made with his blessing. It also doesn’t include whatever he may or may not be paying to acquire Bari Weiss’ Free Press.
The point is: David Ellison is spending a lot of money on his media business.
And Wednesday is a reminder of why Ellison can spend a lot of money on his media business: His father, Larry, who financed the Paramount deal, is very, very, very wealthy.
As of Wednesday, the Oracle cofounder was the wealthiest man in the world, due to a spike in Oracle stock that brought his net worth to an estimated $400 billion.
To be clear: David Ellison is not using his father’s wealth to directly finance any of his recent dealmaking. Paramount remains a publicly traded company and will pay for the programming and acquisitions it makes on its own. It is also expected to go through another wave of layoffs this fall to bring some of its other costs down.
But what Larry Ellison’s wealth provides his son — in addition to the bulk of the financing that allowed him to acquire Paramount in the first place — is something close to an infinite timeline.
Unlike other media moguls, whose fortune and worldview can be tied directly to the fate of their media companies, Larry Ellison is so wealthy that buying a troubled movie and TV operation is a thing he can do without breaking a sweat — the same way he casually pledged $1 billion to his pal Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover back in 2022.
Context: Investors currently value Paramount at about $17 billion — and Larry Ellison just saw his net worth increase by more than $100 billion on a single day.
All that means is that if Paramount investors don’t like a deal the company makes, and punish the stock for it, David Ellison doesn’t need to freak out. Yes, he has a duty to run the company in a way that benefits other shareholders who aren’t named Ellison, but he and his father also control the company. So those other shareholders don’t have a ton of recourse if they want to pressure him.
It also means that if David Ellison wants to spend even more money to consolidate a competitor — the Warner Bros. movie studio is a theoretical target — he doesn’t have to worry much about rounding up the financing for that.
That was all true before this week. Now it’s even more so.
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