Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Monday, December 8th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top story so far,

Paramount is pitching a sequel. Paramount Skydance has launched a hostile $30 per share all-cash tender offer

for Warner Brothers Discovery, the same price Paramount offered last week. The move follows WBD's

agreement on Friday to sell its Warner Brothers assets to Netflix for $72 billion, or an

enterprise value of $82.7 billion. Paramount, however, is bidding for the entire company, offering an equity

value of $74.4 billion, and an enterprise value of 108.4 billion. The bid is backstopped by

the Ellison family and Redbird Capital, with $54 billion of debt commitments from Bank of America,

City, and Apollo Global Management. Jared Kushner's Affinity Capital is also involved.

Paramount plans to go directly to WBD shareholders,

arguing it's in their interest to keep the company intact

rather than sell assets piecemeal.

Paramount will also argue as a better chance

of securing regulatory approval than Netflix,

citing antitrust concerns,

and the potential for the Trump administration

to block the Netflix deal.

In a statement, Paramount said its proposal provides shareholders $18 billion more in cash than the

Netflix consideration, and that WBD's board is favoring the Netflix deal based on an illusory

prospective valuation of the global network unit, which is unsupported by fundamentals and

burdened by high leverage.

The deal now moves from negotiations to a public campaign, where both sides will try and echo

...