Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison and his tech billionaire dad Larry Ellison have been sued by a Paramount shareholder who alleged they cut an “illegal” deal with President Donald Trump to secure U.S. governmental approval for the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The shareholder lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court, seeks to block Paramount’s $111 billion merger with WBD and also seeks unspecified monetary damages. According to the suit, the Ellisons allegedly promised “illegal private benefits to President Trump in order to remove federal regulatory barriers.”
Per the lawsuit, the Ellisons’ side deal with Trump included “the opportunity to improperly funnel cash” to to the president by settling his legal claims against CNN, as well as promises that CNN anchors whom Trump does not like would be fired after the WBD takeover. “The Ellisons’ actions not only harm the reputations of the news outlets they currently own, which are hemorrhaging viewers, but they are latent liabilities waiting to be triggered by a future administration,” the suit says.
The complaint was filed a day after 12 Democratic state attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the Paramount-WBD merger on antitrust grounds, alleging it would give the combined company undue control in theatrical and cable TV markets. The WGA also sued to stop the merger, claiming it would hurt writers’ pay and job opportunities.
Reps for Paramount Skydance, Oracle and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Trump is not named as a defendant.)
Since the Paramount-Skydance deal closed in August 2025, “the Ellisons proceeded to remake CBS in the president’s image, bought properties he enjoyed, and even hosted events to honor him,” the suit said. “This helped the Ellisons, but it appears to have hurt Paramount.” Larry Ellison was a primary financial backer of the Paramount Global deal and is personally backstopping the Warner Bros. takeover as well.
Paramount’s proposed WBD acquisition was given a green light from the U.S. Justice Department in mid-June, which did not impose any requirements for divestitures or other concessions on the part of Paramount Skydance. Top DOJ officials cleared Paramount-WBD over the objections of lower-ranking lawyers at the department, who were inclined to challenge the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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After Trump indicated his preference for Paramount to acquire WBD — over Netflix’s deal to buy Warner Bros.’s streaming and studio businesses — federal regulators took a conspicuously hands-off approach to the reviewing the Paramount-WBD merger, according to the suit. Per the complaint, there has been no indication that the deal is under review by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), despite Paramount lining up $24 billion from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. According to Paramount, the three Middle Eastern funds would own 38.5% of the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Paramount has previously said foreign investors backing the WBD bid will not have board seats or voting shares, and thus CFIUS review is not warranted.
According to the shareholder lawsuit, the lack of scrutiny of the Paramount-WBD deal introduces risk for Paramount investors. The suit said that “future presidential administrations are likely to subject such an ownership structure to intense and persistent scrutiny, creating significant long-term exposure for Paramount. The court should use its equitable power to stop defendants from reaping personal benefits based on illegal activity.”
The Paramount investor named as lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Paul Robbins, who is being represented by Thomas Law, Public Integrity Project and Freedom of the Press Foundation. A copy of the complaint is available at this link.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement about the lawsuit: “The economic terms of this merger, on their own, make no sense for Paramount shareholders. They make even less sense given reports of the Ellisons’ commitments to Trump to tank CNN’s reputation and viewership just like they did at CBS. CNN and CBS viewers want real journalism. If Paramount’s news networks are watered down to appease the administration, they’ll stop tuning in, and the public will be less informed.”
Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, commented: “America’s richest people want to turn America’s most important media outlets into propaganda machines for the president. This is bad for Paramount’s shareholders. This is bad for democracy. And this is deeply corrupt. This case is about exposing and stopping that corruption.”
In addition to David and Larry Ellison, the suit names as defendants Paramount Skydance board members: Gerry Cardinale, Safra Catz, Andrew Brandon-Gordon, Paul Marinelli, John Thornton, Barbara Byrne, Andrew Campion, Justin Hamill and Sherry Lansing.
According to the lawsuit, the stockholder derivative action brought by Robbins is against “Lawrence and David Ellison, Paramount’s father-son controlling stockholders, to prevent them from profiting from breaches of their fiduciary duty of loyalty as Paramount’s controllers,” as well as David Ellison in his capacity as CEO and chairman of Paramount Skydance “to prevent David Ellison from profiting from breaches of his fiduciary duty of loyalty as a Paramount director”; and “the entire Paramount Board, to prevent them from closing a merger transaction with Warner Bros. Discovery (the ‘Merger’) that, as currently configured, would allow Paramount fiduciaries to profit from an illegal bribery scheme in breach of their fiduciary duties of loyalty to Paramount and otherwise in violation of bedrock Delaware corporate law.”
The plaintiff, Paul Robbins, is currently a Paramount stockholder and has “continuously been a Paramount stockholder since before the August 7, 2025 combination of Paramount Global and Skydance” that created Paramount Skydance, per the lawsuit.
From Variety US