A federal judge has now granted Paramount’s settlement agreement with 12 states that sued over the company’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, allowing the companies to soon close their $81 billion mega merger.
In a Wednesday order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that the proposed consent decree was a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms” alleged by the states' lawsuit. Paramount previously called the antitrust challenge the last hurdle ahead of closing its Warner merger, and signaled that it aims to close its Warner acquisition as soon as early October.
