I'm curious how often tactics like this work. It is essentially asking the Warner stockholders to act against the wishes of their elected board.

It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval" which is so deeply gross but also probably persuasive to many. Jared Kushner is involved in the Paramount bid so you know they're greasing the right wheels.

Their case for approval is much stronger than Netflix's regardless of who is president.

Netflix is the largest streaming service in the country right now. It is 4x larger than Paramount+ in terms of total subscribers. Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is naturally going to receive more scrutiny for this reason alone.

> curious how often tactics like this work

Hostile takeovers hit their zenith "in the 1980s" [1], when about 50% of attempts succeeded [2].

Since then, Delaware courts have become more Board friendly (specifically, friendly to takeover defences), antitrust made "it more difficult for companies with large market shares to acquire competitors without some level of cooperation from the target company," and stocks became more expensive [1]. (I'm struggling to find recent literature on frequencies.)

Compared to the 1980s and pre-Covid hostile takeover zenith, stocks remain expensive. But money is chaper, particularly for the politically connected. Antitrust is a wild card. And Warner has reduced takeover defences given it's already in the market for a sale (Revlon duties).

So...somewhere below 50%?

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/11/08/the-comeback-of-h...

[2] https://faculty.fiu.edu/~daiglerr/pdf/hostile_takeovers.pdf

>> We are offering shareholders $17.6 billion more cash than the deal they currently have signed up with Netflix

> It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval"

It seems to me that the main thrust of the pitch is more money.

"Jared Kushner is part of Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46195014

And probably also right.