It has only been four weeks since Paramount Skydance completed its (rather contentious) $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery to become Skydance Corporation, but the entertainment colossus is already laying off workers within its video game division.
some commenters might think Skydance is doing layoffs because they’re overextended financially and are worried and nervous about how to balance the books.
not so.
if you observe the pattern of all these mega mergers, layoffs are just step 1 in the playbook. every time, there’s a standard procedure. and the goal is not balancing the books.
maintaining the original companies at their existing staff level? never considered.
paying off loans and putting cash in the bank for emergencies or supporting employees? not in the USA, no Sir.
Standard Operating Procedure
mergers/acquisitions are a finance company operation. all these media & other corporations are trying to become finance companies. its a trend called “financialization of the economy”.
the standard procedure is:
- buy an asset (company)
- reduce costs (staff)
- pay investors (shareholder dividends)
- write off everything (cancel releases & products then mark as losses to claim as tax rebate)
- pay investors (shareholder dividends)
- sell (butcher creative studios and sell their IPs for profit)
OR keep (collect IPs to create media empire for
influencingbrainwashing voters & consumers) - rinse, repeat
what about paying off the financiers who backed the purchase, you ask?
i ask you, why fully pay off a loan when you can pay just a little, flash some creative accounting to “prove” you can pay fully and just take out more loans instead?
economic principles, you say?
what’s that? is it tasty?
They are gonna crash these brands so hard
Hardly surprising considering they barely gave two shits about WB Games at any point during the acquisition process.
The leveraged buyout left Warner Bros with what’s probably an unpayable loan, so it’s not surprising they are scrambling to try to save the Titanic.
I’ve seen someone call the Skydance deal “adding extra steps to Netflix deal”.
Because Skydance got Warner overpriced and getting in debt with investment funds, so as soon as they have issues to pay, they will butcher parts of the company to sell them.
d’uh
