Jared
Kushner, the President’s Son-in-Law, Is Part of Paramount’s Bid for Warner
Bros. Discovery
Mr.
Kushner’s private equity fund is one of the many groups helping Paramount mount
a hostile bid to buy the group, whose holdings include CNN.
Lauren
Hirsch
By Lauren
Hirsch
Dec. 8,
2025
Paramount’s
hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday included a list of investors
lined up to back the offer. Perhaps none stood out more than Affinity Partners,
the private equity firm founded by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Paramount
said in the filing that Larry Ellison, the father of the company’s chief
executive, David Ellison, alongside the private equity firm RedBird Capital
Partners, had committed to backstop the $40 billion in cash needed for the bid.
But it has lined up a number of other investors, including Mr. Kushner’s
private equity firm, to offload some of that investment.
It was
unclear from the filing how much Mr. Kushner’s firm had offered as an
investment. Paramount declined to comment.
The
inclusion of Affinity Partners adds a new political twist to the fight for
Warner Bros. Discovery. The Trump administration will need to approve of any
deal. The president has long been critical of CNN, one of the company’s
properties. If the Ellisons are able to close an agreement with Affinity’s
help, a piece of the parent company would be owned by the Trump family.
It is
highly unusual for a president to have a direct say on major corporate deals,
which are typically reviewed by independent regulators at a distance from
politicians’ input. But on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he would be “involved” in the
regulatory review of the Netflix deal.
Mr.
Kushner founded the private equity firm after Mr. Trump’s first term and faced
scrutiny over its deep reliance on the Saudi sovereign wealth fund known as the
Public Investment Fund. The firm, which has roughly $5.4 billion under
management, had been known primarily for taking small stakes in companies such
as the Shlomo Group, an Israeli car-leasing and financing company, and
Dubizzle, a Dubai-based classifieds site.
More
recently, though, it has become involved in larger and more high-profile deals.
It is investing alongside the P.I.F. and Silver Lake Partners to buy Electronic
Arts for roughly $55 billion.
Other
financing backers for Paramount’s bid include the sovereign wealth firms for
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Paramount said in regulatory filings that
these investors would forgo any governance in running Warner Bros. Discovery as
well as board seats. It said in the filing that it had made these concessions
to ease concerns about getting the deal approved by the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, the interagency committee that
assesses whether a deal poses national security concerns.
If
Paramount completes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Mr. Ellison and
RedBird will be controlling shareholders in the new company.
Some
national security experts said the transaction might still be scrutinized.
“The only
ways to know for sure that your transaction is not covered by CFIUS is, one,
don’t have foreign investors or, two, get a letter from CFIUS saying it’s not
covered,” said Aaron Bartnick, a former CFIUS official in the Biden White House
and Treasury Department.
Paramount
also said it had entered into new debt financing arrangements with Bank of
America, Citi and Apollo Capital Management for up to $54 billion.
Lauren
Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and
Washington.
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