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A private equity firm owned by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is no longer backing Paramount’s hostile acquisition bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the firm confirmed Tuesday.Days after Warner agreed to be bought by Netflix in early December, Paramount launched a rival bid that seeks to bypass Warner’s management and appeal directly to its shareholders with more money. Paramount is offering $30 per Warner share to Netflix’s $27.75.Warner, one of the “big five” Hollywood studios, owns Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO, the DC Comics universe and the Harry Potter franchise. Experts say its acquisition could supercharge the winning company and reshape the streaming wars, either by catapulting Netflix further ahead of top competitors or by cementing a new power player in Paramount.Paramount, which is significantly smaller than Netflix, said its decision to circumvent Warner’s top managers came after they “never engaged meaningfully” with several earlier offers by the company.Paramount made the details of its new offer public and gave Warner shareholders an option to tender their shares selling them directly at a set price in support of its bid. The company is offering to buy Warner’s entire portfolio, including cable networks like CNN that Netflix excluded from its bid.In its appeal to shareholders, Paramount argued its offer may be more likely to pass regulatory scrutiny from the Trump administration.The president has said the Warner and Netflix deal “could be a problem” due to the size of the combined market share.Kushner’s decision to pull his firm’s financial backing takes away a possible Paramount advantage to win over Trump. The amount Kushner’s Affinity Partners was contributing to the offer was not disclosed in Paramount’s latest SEC filings.“With two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, Affinity has decided no longer to pursue the opportunity,” the firm said in a statement. “The dynamics of the investment have changed significantly since we initially became involved in October. We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount’s offer.”Paramount’s bid is still backed by wealth funds run by three governments in the Persian Gulf, widely reported as Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.Paramount, which owns which owns CBS, MTV and the streaming service Paramount+, is newly headed by David Ellison, the son of a major Trump donor. But Trump has recently criticized the Ellisons for his treatment by CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”“If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” Trump said Tuesday on Truth Social.Warner is reviewing Paramount’s offer and is expected to tell shareholders soon whether it’s a better deal than selling to Netflix. Hannah Schoenbaum, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Want to know how much you spent on Uber Eats this past year? If the answer is no, bad luck. Just days after Saturday Night Live dropped a satirical skit about an “Uber Eats wrapped,” Uber brought the feature to life with a year-end recap. Around this time each year, platforms from Spotify to YouTube start rolling out personalized recaps, breaking down how users spent their time over the past 12 months. The next logical step? A full accounting of every Uber trip taken and every guilt-ridden Uber Eats order placed this year. On Monday, the company launched its new year-in-review feature called YOUBER, which compiles users activity across both Uber and Uber Eats. The recap shows where you went, how often you splurged on Uber Comfort, and just how frequently you returned to the same takeout spot. If you rank in the top 1% of a restaurants customers, YOUBER will let you know, whether or not that realization fills you with pride or shame. In the SNL sketch, one character learns hes eaten more chicken nuggets than 99% of users worldwide. Another is assigned an Uber Eats agea riff on Spotifys listening ageonly to be told his is Dead. Better than mine, his wife replies. 52 and fat. The parody recap also shows users the compromising and unflattering ways they appeared to the delivery driver while grabbing their food from their doorway. Finally, the app shows personalized messages from customers most frequented restaurants, and calculates the total spent on deliveriesin this case, $24,000. Ubers real version is slightly less brutal. The YOUBER featurecurrently available only in the U.S.can be accessed via a banner in the app and presents users with a card of their stats. That includes total rides, top order, most-used ride type, Uber rating, and one of 14 assigned Uber Personality Profiles, such as Do-Gooder for Uber Electric loyalists, Rise & Shiner for early-morning riders, or Delivery Darling for users who live for deliveries of all kinds. Of course, all shareable on social media if youre brave enough. Alongside individual recaps, Uber also shared global highlights from its 2025 data. The longest ride of the year stretched nearly 700 miles from Austin, Texas, to Pensacola, Florida, taking around 11 hours. Meanwhile, Uber Eats largest order of the year was a Chinese food delivery containing more than 180 items.
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E-Commerce
The proposed $85 billion merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads has lost the support of two unions that represent more than half their workers over concerns it will jeopardize safety and jobs, raise shipping rates and consumer prices, and cause significant disruptions. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division are among the most prominent critics of the deal to create the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. When they officially announce their decision Wednesday, they will join the American Chemistry Council, an assortment of agricultural groups, and competing railroad BNSF in raising concerns the merger would hurt competition. The deal has the support of the nation’s largest rail union, which represents conductors and hundreds of individual shippers, and President Donald Trump has said the deal sounds good to him. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board will weigh the opinions of all stakeholders to determine whether the merger is in the public interest once the railroads file their formal application, which is expected later this week. Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena has argued that creating a railroad that stretches from coast to coast would be good for the economy because without the need for a hand-off between railroads in the middle of the country rail shipments would move faster, meaning it could better compete against trucking. But after months of meetings with Vena and other executives, the presidents of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division unionsboth affiliated with the Teamsterssaid they have serious doubts about the potential benefits, and warned the promises Vena made to preserve jobs aren’t detailed enough to be reliable. The unions say there’s nothing to keep the companies from transferring jobs hundreds of miles away or to prevent the sale of some UP lines to short-line railroads that pay less. Union Pacific said in a statement that every employee with a union job at the time of the merger will continue to have one. Weve formalized this jobs-for-life agreement with five unions. Vena has acknowledged that the number of employees at the combined railroad could still shrink through attrition, if workers leave on their own. Rail unions worry about safety and shippers This proposed monopoly will end up costing businesses more and those costs will be passed on to consumers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen National President Mark Wallace said. “We believe this transcontinental railroad will make shipping by rail less attractive as the merged carrier passes off rail lines that serve small towns, factories and farms to short line railroads while running miles-long slow-moving trains on the main line. For rail customers it will be a choice between Hell or the highway.’ The unions say they are worried that safety could deteriorate after a merger, because Union Pacific hasn’t made the same improvements Norfolk Southern has in the two and a half years since the disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Vena and Norfolk Southern CEO Mark George have said they are optimistic the merger will be approved because they believe it will be good for the country, their customers and rail workers. Shareholders of both railroads overwhelmingly support it. Deal faces stringent review The Surface Transportation Board will review the deal under a tough new standard it adopted in 2001 after a series of disastrous rail mergers in the 1990s that led to shipment delays of weeks or even months. These untested rules require any merger of the six largest railroads to be in the public interest and show that it will enhance competition. When the Surface Transportation Board approved the first major rail merger in more than two decades two years ago, it used a less stringent standard allowing Canadian Pacific’s $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern. Transportation expert and DePaul University Professor Joe Schwieterman said many people have questioned the Union Pacific merger because of its scope and the likelihood that it could trigger another merger, resulting in only two American railroads. Everyone will examine the merger application closely, Schwieterman said. Currently, Norfolk Southern and CSX serve the eastern U.S. while Union Pacific and BNSF serve the west, and the two major Canadian rails compete where they can with their tracks crossing Canada and extending into the United States and Mexico. A merged Union Pacific would likely control more than 40% of the nations freight. This merger is like nothing weve seen before. Its creating a railroad of such enormous scope that its somewhat of a paradigm shift, Schwieterman said. Competitors question the benefits BNSF’s Chief of Staff Zak Andersen said his railroad, which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is convinced this merger would be bad for competition and lead to higher rates and fewer options for shippers. No customer is asking for this. This is strictly a Wall Street play for shareholders, Andersen said. Earlier this fall, Buffett and CPKC’s CEO both said they weren’t interested in any kind of rail merger right now. Instead, they believe the railroads should continue to find ways to cooperate to deliver shipments more quickly, which can be done without all the complications of a merger. Still, CSX decided to replace its CEO this fall with an executive who has a background leading companies through major mergers. Josh Funk, AP transportation writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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