Paramount Skydance seeks $7.5 billion in fresh loans to fund Warner Bros. merger
Paramount Skydance is borrowing another $7.5 billion to help buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
The company has launched a syndication, meaning it is offering the loan in pieces to a group of lenders, for a senior secured incremental tranche of term B loans, meaning long-term loans backed by company assets and typically held by institutional investors. Proceeds are earmarked for its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger and to pay down certain other debt, according to Variety.
The $7.5 billion is only part of the bill. Paramount said it intends to raise about $44.4 billion more in additional secured debt, subject to market and other conditions. Borrowings would sit alongside cash on hand and proceeds from previously announced equity financing to pay the purchase price and repay certain existing debt.
The numbers are large because the combined debt load is large. Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimated the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. would carry $77.2 billion in net debt on a pro-forma basis at the end of 2026, meaning on paper as if the merger had already happened.
For viewers, this means the deal that decides where films, series and streaming libraries live is now a financing story. Crews, writers' rooms and release schedules all sit downstream of whether the money is raised and the merger closes.
Legal clearance is close. Paramount has reached a settlement with 12 state attorneys general to resolve their antitrust lawsuit over the merger. A judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, 24 September 2026, to review the proposed consent decree, meaning the court-approved settlement. If approved, the merger is expected to close in about two weeks.
That timeline follows days of detailed debt reporting. Bloomberg reported on 22 September that a $49 billion debt sale would kick off after the lawsuits ended. Quartz reported on 23 September that the package included $30 billion in investment-grade bonds, $12 billion in second-lien bonds, meaning debt repaid after first-ranked lenders if things go wrong, and $7.5 billion in loans.
Reuters reported on 22 September that a California-led settlement had cleared the way for what it described as a $110 billion acquisition. The more recent 24 September figure of $111 billion is used here as the authoritative purchase figure.
The road to this point was contested. Paramount submitted a revised proposal to Warner Bros. on 24 February 2026, according to a Paramount investor statement. Warner Bros. rejected that revised offer, Reuters reported on 17 February, with disagreement including who would cover a potential $1.5 billion junior lien financing fee. The same investor statement said Paramount had secured commitments for debt financing of up to $57.5 billion.
