Ellison pledges 413 million Oracle shares as part of Warner takeover financing
Key Facts
The Wall Street Journal disclosed details of Larry Ellison's borrowing against his shares before the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition closed, in a deal that combined personal financing with corporate debt and new equity investments. The newspaper said the collateral included stakes in Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount. According to an Oracle filing, Ellison had pledged 413 million shares in the company to secure personal indebtedness as of September 21, 2026. That compares with 346,000,000 shares pledged as of September 19, 2025, according to the company's previous annual filing. Banks from which he increased his borrowing included Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, UBS and BNP Paribas, the newspaper reported.
Borrowing against shares allowed Ellison to retain his holdings and avoid realizing taxable gains from selling them, according to The Wall Street Journal. Oracle states in its filing that the pledged shares secure personal term loans used exclusively to fund Ellison's personal ventures outside the company. Oracle's governance committee reviews the pledging arrangements every fiscal quarter from a risk management perspective. The company announced on September 12, 2026, that Ellison had canceled a plan to sell his Oracle shares. It said in the cancellation announcement: "No Oracle shares were sold under that plan."
The borrowing details emerged after the acquisition closed on October 6, 2026, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Paramount Skydance Corporation carried out the purchase, and Warner Bros. Discovery became a wholly owned subsidiary of the company bearing the Skydance name. The Associated Press valued the acquisition at about $111 billion, including debt. Financing for the deal included $47 billion in new Class B equity investments, according to the closing statement filed with the SEC. The Public Investment Fund, L'imad and the Qatar Investment Authority were among the investors that led the deal's equity financing.
On the corporate financing side, Paramount announced a $41.4 billion secured bond offering as part of the acquisition financing package. The financing announcement also included €885 million in euro-denominated secured bonds. The company also announced the pricing of Term Loan B facilities, including an $8.5 billion dollar-denominated tranche. The euro-denominated tranche of those facilities totaled €850 million, according to Paramount's official announcement. At the acquisition's closing, Reuters reported that the combined company was expected to carry nearly $80 billion in debt.
The debt burden increases the importance of cash generation and growth in the combined company's streaming business, according to Reuters' coverage of the deal's closing. In the market, Skydance began trading under its new ticker on October 6, 2026, coinciding with the completion of the acquisition. The stock traded at about $9.43 at 3:35 p.m. U.S. Eastern time, according to Investing.com. The shares were down 3.58% at that point during the first trading session under the new ticker. Operationally, the integration plan includes combining streaming services, including HBO Max and Paramount+, into a single service, according to Reuters.
Skydance is targeting annual run-rate synergies of at least $6 billion, according to the acquisition closing statement. The company set a timeline of 3 years to achieve that target as part of the integration. David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz said in their closing letter that the aim of combining the companies was to build a stronger competitor. They described the envisioned company as having "the scale needed to compete with the biggest players in our industry." Skydance will report its third-quarter 2026 results on November 9, 2026, according to the company's investor relations announcement.