Congressman Urges FCC to Deny Paramount-WBD Middle East Investment

Congressman Sam Liccardo is urging FCC chairman Brendan Carr to deny Paramount Skydance’s petition that would allow three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and other foreign investors to acquire 49.5% of the equity of the company following its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

Together, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar would control a combined 38.5% non-voting stake, exceeding the FCC’s statutory 25% threshold for foreign ownership. Other foreign equity owners include “passive limited partner investors” in funds managed by RedBird Capital Partners, which would account for 5.8%, and foreign-based entities that have acquired the company’s Class B stock, who would control 5.2%.

Paramount has argued that it would not result in a transfer of control and that the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners would hold the largest equity stake in the company. But Liccardo argues that the “procedural subtlety of restricting these sovereign funds to non-voting equity shares does not resolve this conflict.”

“Paramount characterizes this arrangement as routine passive foreign investment.It cannot gaslight the American public,” he wrote. “The scale of their ownership alone constitutes more than mere influence; the company’s financial dependence makes it beholden to its largest shareholders. The Commission must not allow a legal technicality to launder what is, in substance, a surrender of American media and infrastructure to the hands of foreign authoritarian regimes.”

Liccardo also notes that Paramount’s filing seeks a declaratory ruling authorizing up to 100 percent foreign equity ownership in its broadcast
licensees.

“The company disingenuously dismisses this as a “procedural maneuver,” but the Commission should not fall for it. The sovereign wealth funds involved represent authoritarian regimes with complex and, at times, adversarial relationships with U.S. foreign policy objectives and norms of press freedom,” Liccardo’s letter continues. “The Commission’s public interest standard is not satisfied merely by confirming that domestic parties hold voting shares. Broadcast licensees bear affirmative obligations to serve local communities, maintain editorial independence, and support a robust and free press. The financial architecture of this deal — in which foreign sovereign entities provide most of the equity capital—creates structural dependencies and incentive distortions incompatible with these obligations, regardless of formal voting arrangements.”

More to come…