Exclusive: Paramount Skydance CEO Ellison on Hostile Bid for WBD 12/8/25

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Jim Cramer (0:30)

It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

David Faber (0:38)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm David Faber along with Sara Eisen and Mike Santoli. We are live from Postline at the New York Stock Exchange. Jim and Carl both taking a morning off. Let's give you a quick look at futures and get ready to set you up for the trading day ahead. Not to mention, of course, the week ahead. You can see, looking slightly higher as we get to half hour from now, trading for the morning.

Of course, so much going on in terms of the markets. Not to mention, of course, M&A as well, which we've been focused on. Yes, yes, Thursday and Friday were busy days from the beach, so to speak, of course. Meanwhile, the markets as well.

Michael Santoli (1:24)

Drifting up toward the old highs, that's been the rule. And obviously, also, Fed meeting, anticipating the market playbook that being executed right now is buy banks and cyclical stocks, because it seems like you're going to get a Fed rate cut into a potential re-acceleration of the economy. Whether the market has that right or not, that's the clear message being sent. We are also seeing longer-term yields leak a little bit higher, you know, above 415 or so on the 10-year. But it's happening with credit markets pretty calm. So I think all in all, it's a pretty comfortable setup, and people think they have a little bit of an upside bias into year-end. Didn't work last year. The same set of things. We actually had a sloppy close to the year for the S&P and, of course, the first quarter gut check and a recession scare. But obviously, with some basis on the policy front, people are a little more comfortable.

Sara Eisen (2:10)

I just note that there's a little bit of a backup in Treasury yields. We saw that last week as well into this Fed meeting. There's some expectation that we'll get a so-called hawkish cut from the Fed, which is almost 100 percent chance now in the market that the Fed cuts. But will they raise the bar for cutting again in January? At this point where it stands, penciled in cuts, we only have really one as far as the median dots go. We'll get a new dot plot, so-called projections from the other Fed members this week.

And let's see what they say and what they pencil in as far as more potential cuts. As the unemployment rate rises, not to alarming levels, but that trend is part of their mandate, but also inflation stays stubbornly high.

Michael Santoli (2:53)

I mean, last Fed meeting, you know, when Powell came out and said the next cut is not a foregone conclusion, the market was already pricing very high odds of getting that additional cut. Right now we're not really doing that. Yeah, so he felt he had to drag the market away from the wrong spot. That's not really the case right now. I also don't think it's really going to be hawkish. It might just be non-committal. It's going to be data dependent.

Sara Eisen (3:14)

It shouldn't be committal because they're going to get a lot of data.

Michael Santoli (3:16)

Exactly, yeah.

Sara Eisen (3:17)

Including tomorrow, we're going to get October Jolt's report, job openings. You know, not necessarily going to be super definitive for the Fed, but it will be another input that they have, given that they don't have the October jobs report. The last jobs report we have is from September.

Michael Santoli (3:30)

Yeah.

David Faber (3:30)

So what do we want to be focused on here in these last couple of trading leaks of the year, Mike?

Michael Santoli (3:34)

I mean, other than the Fed.

David Faber (3:37)

You know what, guys, I want to stop you there because I do want to update our viewers on breaking news we have this morning involving, of course, that enormous deal that was announced on Friday in which Warner Bros. agreed to sell itself to Netflix. Obviously, a lot of reporting throughout from me on Paramount and their frustration with, in fact, the process itself. And we can now, according to the wires and a press release, just tell you that Paramount is now launching a tender offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery $30 a share all cash. Now what this will have the effect of doing essentially is making the shareholder vote on the Netflix transaction the key, where shareholders will be making their voices heard conceivably. We don't even have a date for that shareholder vote. Typically, it can be three to four months after the announcement. Obviously, we've got to wait for the merger proxy and get the background, at least the background according to Warner Bros. But what we do have now is the background, essentially according to Paramount and the fact that throughout in this press release, they feel as though they were not given the attention they deserved and were not treated on equal footing to Netflix. And hence, in bringing a tender offer of this type to shareholders, they are going to share everything with those shareholders of Warner Bros.