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$16.02 Candles

The strangest number in Larry Ellison’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery may be $16.02—the price he and RedBird agreed to pay for $47 billion of new Paramount Skydance stock, a 60 percent premium that has Wall Street scratching its head.

Larry Ellison
Whether the Ellisons and RedBird end up with 2.9 billion new shares at $16.02 per share, or 3.6 billion new shares at an arbitrary $13 a share, isn’t going to change the fact that they control this thing. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
March 8, 2026

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Of all the mysteries that still surround Paramount Skydance’s successful conquest of Warner Bros. Discovery—how will the Ellisons achieve $18 billion in EBITDA? How can the management team cut $6 billion in costs without prompting a bloodbath? How much longer does loose-lipped Jeff Shell have before he walks the plank?—one great curiosity has confounded Wall Street: Why did Larry Ellison and RedBird Capital pay $16.02 a share with their fresh $47 billion of equity in Paramount Skydance for the new Class B shares that will grease the wheels of its $111 billion acquisition?