alt Hacker News> With his new toy having a leverage ratio north of 6x, David Ellison has promised $6 billion in “synergies” within three years. (Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos put the figure closer to $16 billion, after examining WBD’s books.
What is it that these CEOs think they are seeing, that everyone else is missing? I can believe they have inflated egos, but they’re not totally crazy, right? My impression is that Netflix is fairly sober and results oriented, so I’m confused by the whole thing.
Replies
Rich people don't buy media companies because this is the best business in the world. Quite the opposite, most media companies are mediocre or lose money. They do this because of the political clout they get with the control of these media properties.
> that everyone else is missing?
To be fair, sometimes they do. Musk saw genuine bloat at Twitter. I’m doubtful one can optimize that much out of WarnerBrothers. But Hollywood isn’t exactly known for being efficient.
There is a large history of companies with too much money (or access to borrowing) using it to buy up shiny objects. Whether it is CEO pride, greed, anger, or envy, it does not seem to matter.
Layoffs as you consolidate operations between enterprises. See Capital One laying off thousands at Discover Financial after their acquisition.
Capital One to lay off more than 1,100 in latest cuts at Discover Financial HQ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47270442 - March 2026
Succession planning.
This appears to be Larry Ellison trying to manage succession for his kids. We'll probably see a second major acquisition like this for Megan (who tends to be more progressive leaning) [edit: I was right. Megan Ellison is making moves as well now [0]]
Larry would not be able to do something similar at Oracle today (definitely in the 2000s though), as by the 2010s operational control at Oracle increasingly shifted to operators like Catz, Hurd, and Kurian. It also would have led to bad blood à la the Murdochs.
One heir cultivating the right wing (David) and the other heir cultivating the progressive wing (Megan) buys a level of political impunity for the next generation that is hard to come by.
[0] - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/megan-el...
They're buying control of narrative on issues they care about; the history of media is mostly that. Newspapers were kind of invented for that reason. Our ideas of ethics in journalism are fairly modern.