<\/p>\n
On December 7, 2025, Constellation Energy settled a lawsuit previously filed against it by the United States Department of Justice and the State of Texas. The settlement has had the effect of allowing Constellation to complete a planned $26.65 billion purchase of Calpine, which DOJ and Texas had initially objected to on antitrust grounds.<\/p>\n
Assuming nothing else now occurs to further derail the merger, with this antitrust settlement, Constellation is now set to become the largest wholesale power provider in the nation, giving Constellation substantial market power, even though it also risks reducing competition in the power sector. (Source<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in another market entirely, Netflix has recently announced an agreement to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery for a massive valuation of $82.7 billion.\u00a0(Source<\/a>).\u00a0 The target company, WBD, controls a library of shows and movies such as Casablanca<\/em> and Citizen Kane<\/em>, as well as more recent hits, like Squid Game<\/em> and others.<\/p>\n Both mergers clearly involve antitrust considerations.\u00a0 To purchase Calpine, Constellation was forced to sell six power plants and divest a minority stake in a seventh plant.\u00a0 This marked the first settlement consent decree that the DOJ has filed in an electricity merger in 14 years.\u00a0 That might not be the end of the story, however, as Duke Energy has also filed a private antitrust action against the same merger, although the United States Solicitor General has also urged the United States Supreme Court to dismiss the Duke Energy lawsuit.<\/p>\n As for the entertainment industry merger, that might also have some twists left.\u00a0 Specifically, Paramount has been in the bidding to purchase Warner Bros. and Discovery (WBD), as well, and like Duke Energy, Paramount also appears not ready to just give up following the decision in favor of the Netflix offer by the Board of Directors of WBD.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One issue that the energy merger did not involve that could affect the entertainment merger is culture.\u00a0 At this point, the Netflix merger is based on a bid of $27.75 per share, while Paramount\u2019s bid is approximately $30\/share.\u00a0 However, The Writers\u2019 Guild of America (WGA) panned the Netflix offer. The Guild claimed such a combination would reduce competition, push down wages, and likely create a financial powerhouse who could invest in creating deep fake AI characters. (Source<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n Specifically, the entertainment industry has been convulsed over the last few years with cultural issues.\u00a0 From a legal standpoint, however, if WBD selects Netflix over Paramount because of cultural issues, instead of choosing to maximize shareholder value, that could create a possible \u201cRevlon\u201d violation.\u00a0 This relates to a 1985 ruling of the Delaware Supreme Court involving the takeover of Revlon, Inc. \u00a0The Court then ruled that the obligation of Revlon\u2019s Board of Directors was to seek the best value for shareholders and not to try to rely on applying amorphous and subjective issues, such as \u201cculture.\u201d\u00a0 At present, Paramount\u2019s initial offer exceeded Netflix\u2019s per share price and was structured as an entire company offer.\u00a0 By contrast, Netflix only seeks to purchase WBD\u2019s studio and streaming services, leaving WBD\u2019s cable networks (including celebrity.land) and other assets out of the deal.<\/p>\n Regarding the antitrust concerns, if nothing else these issues have the effect of slowing down any potential merger in the entertainment industry.\u00a0 That, in turn, adversely affects the arbitragers who quickly rush in when any potential merger is announced, hoping to buy up large shares of the company to be acquired as soon as the final deal is consummated, and thereby to profit on the spread between the price they paid and the final purchase price.\u00a0 Certainly, the arbitragers have been further comforted by the fact that Larry Ellison yesterday personally guaranteed $40.4B to support the Paramount bid.\u00a0(Source<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the Constellation\/Calpine energy transaction, both companies first announced the merger on January 10, 2025.\u00a0 However, anticipating an end-of-year closing, the regulatory hurdles will have caused a delay of one year, with approval from FERC first coming on July 24 and then followed by approvals from the New York Public Service Commission and the Public Utility Commission of Texas.\u00a0(Source<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n One final issue involves the actions of the Trump Administration.\u00a0 The President has stated that he intends to \u201cplay an active role\u201d in certain merger determinations, such as for WBD. (Source<\/a>).\u00a0 That active role was seen in the Calpine merger, as the Department of Justice worked with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to conceptualize and negotiate the eventual settlement.\u00a0 Mr. Paxton claimed that before the settlement, the merger could have allowed Constellation to manipulate market prices by withholding electricity.\u00a0 In forcing the divestment of two power plants, government officials believe that concern has now been alleviated.<\/p>\n By contrast, and unlike the energy industry merger, the entertainment industry merger does not have the potential for such real-world impacts to the public.\u00a0 While the President has not taken sides, he has said that a Netflix takeover \u201ccould\u201d raise problems.\u00a0 He also suggested that whoever takes over WBD also should take over celebrity.land.\u00a0 Paramount has committed to doing this.\u00a0 Thus, it is possible the Paramount deal would present fewer antitrust and regulatory issues for the Trump administration.\u00a0(Source<\/a>).<\/p>\n Whichever way it goes, and in light of the Trump Administration\u2019s impact on the Calpine acquisition, its decisions likely will set the tone for other potential corporate merger combinations during the remainder of its term.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.jdsupra.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On December 7, 2025, Constellation Energy settled a lawsuit previously filed against it by the United States Department of Justice and the State of Texas. The settlement has had the effect of allowing Constellation to complete a planned $26.65 billion purchase of Calpine, which DOJ and Texas had initially objected to on antitrust grounds. Assuming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2212946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2212945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Energy-And-Entertainment-Mergers-Now-Take-Center-Stage-Flaster.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212947,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212945\/revisions\/2212947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2212946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}