On Friday afternoon, the much discussed deal between Discovery and Warner Bros., CNN and HBO was closed. The new company will be called Warner Bros. Discovery. The behemoth is expected to stream huge amounts of content from its combined content. David Zaslav will be the new CEO of the merged companies.
The merger between the two popular media companies had been approved by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission before the “close” of the deal. The boards of directors of Discovery as well as AT&T had approved of the merger, months ago.
Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to begin trading, Monday morning. The new ticker is WBD and its new site for the giant corporate is WBD.com. The market has been bullish about the merger and some in the Street call it a “buy” stock.
The May announcements last year have finally led to an April official merger this year. CEO David Zaslav is expected to address the combined staff, later in the week. There have already been some shake ups, resignations and more. Jason Kilar of WarnerMedia exited on Friday, while Jeff Zucker was asked to step down from CNN, weeks ago. However, the cable news company has a new CEO in Chris Licht.
The new powerhouse will combine two giant streaming platforms HBO Max and Discovery+. Their combined revenue would be roughly close to 50 billion and they will stream a wide diversity of original and archived content. The merged streaming platform will compete with existing giants Netflix and Walt Disney who currently are the top streaming platforms.
David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO said that the merger announcement marked an exciting milestone not only for the new company but also for the shareholders, distributors, advertisers, creative partners, and consumers, all over the world.
He added that the content presented by Warner Bros. Discovery will have “the most differentiated and complete portfolio” that would span different media such as film, TV and streaming.
(Photo/Credit: Warner Media)
