Fortune‘s Eva Roytburg and Nick Lichtenberg, posted yesterday afternoon:
“Jared Kushner has quietly reemerged as a player in one of the biggest takeover fights in modern Hollywood. Paramount’s audacious, all-cash $108 billion hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, announced Monday, names Kushner’s fully owned private equity firm, Affinity Partners, as one of four outside financing partners backing the offer, alongside the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar.
“The detail is buried in Paramount’s tender offer, with Paramount listing “the Public Investment Fund (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), L’imad Holding Company PJSC (Abu Dhabi), Qatar Investment Authority (Qatar), and Affinity Partners (Jared Kushner)” as investors who would, under a successful deal scenario, hold nonvoting equity and forgo governance rights, including board seats.
“The filing also states that because these investors are structured without such rights, “the Transaction will not be within CFIUS’s jurisdiction,” referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Reports have suggested that WBD’s board opted for Netflix’s deal as it lacked any foreign financing components and therefore faced no issues with CFIUS, a notably opaque and powerful antitrust tool that the government can employ to block controversial mergers.”