Netflix boss says $83bn Warner Bros takeover will benefit industry

Netflix boss says $83bn Warner Bros takeover will benefit industry Comments by Ted Sarandos follow Donald Trump’s demand for company to remove Democrat from board Trump warns Netflix of ‘consequences’ unless it pulls top Democrat from board Business live – latest updates The boss of Netflix has launched a fresh defence of its $82.7bn (£61bn) takeover of Warner Bros Discovery assets, as he defended the streaming company’s contribution to the UK film and TV industry. Ted Sarandos claimed Netflix buying WBD would bring “growth” to the entertainment industry, amid attempts by rival Paramount Skydance to launch a counter offer for the studio business which he said would do the opposite. “We’re buying a movie studio and a distribution entity that we don’t currently have,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We’ll be adding to the market where Paramount has committed that they’re going to cut $6bn out of the business right away.” “This industry would be much smaller under that ownership than it would be under Netflix ownership.” Sarandos’s comments followed an extraordinary intervention in the corporate battle by Donald Trump over the weekend. The president ordered Netflix to remove the Democratic foreign policy expert Susan Rice – a former member of Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s administrations – from its board or “face the consequences”. When asked about the comments, Sarandos said: “This is a business deal, it’s not a political deal … He likes to do a lot of things on social media.” Paramount has been given until the end of Monday to table its best and final offer for WBD to compete with Netflix’s existing offer. Paramount, which is controlled by the billionaire Ellison family, has tried to secure a $108.4bn takeover of WBD with a bid backstopped by a personal $40bn guarantee by Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle, the cloud computing firm. Netflix’s bid is for WBD’s studio and streaming platforms, with the rest of the company being spun off separately. Paramount...