One $180 Billion Family Now Controls Every Voting Share of the Company That Owns CNN, CBS, and HBO. It Only Cost About 9% of Their Fortune.

David Ellison and his family invested about $17 billion to complete the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Bloomberg's reading of public filings, which count an estimated 1.4 billion shares bought in the stock offering at $12 per share. Forbes estimated Larry Ellison's fortune at $180.9 billion as of Oct. 8, eighth in the world, making the family's check a little over 9% of the Oracle (ORCL) co-founder's paper net worth on the day the two numbers were published.

What the money bought closed on Oct. 6. The combined company is called Skydance (SKYD), and it now trades on the New York Stock Exchange as SKYD; Barchart has already covered how to approach the stock now that the merger has closed. The assets named in closing coverage include Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max, Paramount+, CBS, CNN, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV, Food Network, HGTV, and Comedy Central. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders received about $31.02 per share in cash, and Bloomberg puts the acquisition's value at $110 billion.

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The prospectus supplement the company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outlines the control structure. "All matters submitted to our stockholders are decided solely by the vote of holders of our Class A Common Stock," the document says, while the Class B shares that public investors own carry no vote except where the law requires one. Harbor Lights Entertainment — the company formerly known as National Amusements — holds all of the Class A stock, and the filing states that “entities controlled by the Ellison family hold approximately 77.5% of our Class A Common Stock indirectly.” Summarizing Bloomberg, Quartz puts it more simply: The Ellison family holds the largest equity stake in the combined company and, together with RedBird, controls 100% of the voting shares.

The $17 billion is not the whole equity check. The acquisition included a $47 billion equity component raised at the same $12-per-share price, so the family's equity stake is a little over a third of it. The balance came from the other investors named in the closing coverage; RedBird, which co-led the equity, and the Public Investment Fund (PIF), L'IMAD, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) — three sovereign wealth funds whose individual amounts the filing Barchart read does not break out. Earlier in the bidding, while Netflix (NFLX) was still pursuing Warner Bros., Larry Ellison reportedly pledged about $40 billion personally to back the offer; Barchart covered the outcome in April as a battle Netflix lost. The gap between $40 billion pledged and about $17 billion invested is, on the filings, the sovereign-fund and RedBird money. Nothing in the record suggests the pledge was withdrawn rather than shared out.

Two things need separating. Larry Ellison's $180.9 billion fortune is a Forbes estimate of paper wealth, mostly Oracle stock, and it moves with the shares. The $17 billion is equity committed under the filings, not cash in an account, and the filing Barchart read does not say how the family funded it — whether through stock sales, borrowing against Oracle shares, or existing cash. Bloomberg's 1.4 billion share count is also an estimate from the filings rather than a figure the company has stated. What the company has stated is the $12 per share price.

The stake's value today depends on where SKYD stock trades against $12, a number the quote page updates every session. Whether the Ellison family is ahead or behind on paper changes daily, but what doesn't change is the voting arithmetic, fixed by the share classes rather than the price.

Nobody outside the family knows the split. The filing names David Ellison, Lawrence Ellison, and the Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust as restricted holders, but it does not say how much of the $17 billion came from the father, the son, or the trust, so "the Ellison family" is the only honest description. The filing also does not state RedBird's exact share of the Class A stock, or the combined company's total debt load, in the sections Barchart read.

As for what the new owners intend to do with the networks, the filing is silent. Barchart reported in August, before the close, that Paramount Skydance could sell CNN, and nothing in the closing documents confirms or rules that out. The numbers in the documents point to about $17 billion from one family, about 9% of one fortune by Forbes' count and, with one partner, every share that votes.

On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.