Paramount, states reject Booker's call for deeper review of merger deal

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Set us as preferred Paramount Skydance and the state attorneys general are defending their proposed settlement in the face of skeptical questions from Sen.Cory Booker (D-N.J.), arguing that the judge overseeing the case should approve the agreement without the deeper review the senator has requested.Booker, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, sent a letter to the court last week asking how the five-year settlement agreement was reached and whether its terms were adequate.

He urged the judge to conduct an “independent public-interest review” before approving it.Last Thursday, U.S.District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín told both sides to answer Booker’s questions before she ruled on whether to approve the proposed consent decree.

She said at the time that she would issue a ruling “in due course.”On Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros.Discovery filed a joint response in the U.S.

District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division.The states filed a separate response.

Both filings rejected Booker’s central request.The review he asked for is modeled on the Tunney Act, a federal law that governs antitrust settlements proposed by the U.S.

Department of Justice, not settlements reached by states.“There is no legal basis for the Court to conduct an independent public interest review,” the companies wrote.

The states asked the judge to decline Booker’s request and instead determine whether the decree is fair, reasonable, equitable and lawful.The agreement came after 12 state attorneys general, including California Atty.Gen.

Rob Bonta, sued in July to block Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros.Discovery, arguing the deal would violate U.S.

antitrust law.After two months of litigation, Paramount and the state attorneys ge...