April 23 (UPI) -- Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted to give their preliminary blessing to the long-debated merger with Paramount Skydance Wednesday morning.
Paramount's offer to buy all of WBD for $31 per share is bound to make shareholders happy as one year ago the Warner Bros. stock was trading at $8 per share. Thursday morning, it was hovering around $27.
Netflix and Paramount have been battling over WBD since October. They had a bidding war, and WBD accepted Netflix's offer on Dec. 5. Soon after, Paramount launched a hostile bid to buy WBD, but the board wasn't interested. Then, Paramount announced that billionaire Oracle creator Larry Ellison would back the deal with $40 billion in equity. On Jan. 20, Netflix changed its offer to all cash, then on Feb. 10, Paramount did the same and added some extras.
Netflix granted WBD a seven-day pause on the deal to evaluate Paramount's offer, and during that time, Paramount raised the bid even more to $31 per share.
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