All articles tagged with #mergers and acquisitions
THR’s Power Lawyers 2026 profiles Hollywood’s top attorneys across talent, litigation and corporate law, highlighting how their negotiations and deals—ranging from billion-dollar mergers and production deals to high-profile star contracts and IP battles—shape the year’s biggest industry moves and keep the entertainment ecosystem running behind the scenes.
Unilever will merge its food arm with McCormick in a $44.8 billion deal, giving Unilever 65% of the new company and McCormick running the global business; the lineup includes Knorr, Pot Noodle, Hellmann’s, French’s, Old Bay and Cholula, with about $600 million in annual cost savings expected by year three. Some Unilever food operations (e.g., India) won’t join, while Unilever’s remaining business focuses on beauty/personal care/home; a European listing is planned; the deal is structured as a Reverse Morris Trust to be tax-free in the US, and shares moved modestly after the announcement.
Beretta Holding is pressing to lift its stake in Sturm Ruger from under 10% to 30% and has proposed an all-cash tender at $44.80 a share after launching a proxy fight to install four new Ruger directors, while Ruger calls the campaign a creeping takeover and vows to defend shareholders’ interests; Beretta says it is not seeking control and remains open to negotiations.
Merck is nearing an all-cash roughly $6 billion deal to acquire Terns Pharma to strengthen its cancer-drug pipeline ahead of Keytruda’s patent expiry around 2028. Terns’ early-stage treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia could advance to late-stage trials by year-end or early 2027. The deal follows Merck’s recent biotech acquisitions (Verona Pharma, Cidara) as the pharma industry braces for patent cliffs and mounting dealmaking in biotechnology.
McCormick is in talks to buy Unilever’s food business, a deal Barclays analysts value at over $30 billion, a move that would dramatically boost its global condiment and cooking-aid portfolio after past acquisitions like Frank's RedHot, French's, and Cholula, though financing and execution remain key hurdles in a tougher market.
Abbott expects to close its acquisition of Exact Sciences on March 23, 2026 after regulatory clearances, adding Exact’s cancer-screening and precision-oncology portfolio (Cologuard, Oncotype DX, Oncodetect, Cancerguard) to expand Abbott’s diagnostics leadership. The deal is projected to bring about $3 billion of incremental sales in 2026, accelerate Abbott’s growth in diagnostics, and dilute 2026 adjusted EPS by about $0.20, as the company aims to make cancer detection and management more accessible.
Unilever is negotiating a multibillion-dollar sale of its food division to McCormick, including Marmite, Hellmann’s, Knorr and Pot Noodle, as it pivots toward beauty and personal care; the deal could use a Reverse Morris Trust and be funded with stock and cash, with Unilever possibly taking a minority stake, but there is no certainty a deal will close.
Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian and order up to 50,000 autonomous Rivian vehicles, starting with 10,000 robotaxi versions of the R2. An initial $300 million is committed now, rising to $1.25 billion by 2031 if milestones are met. The vehicles will begin unsupervised service in San Francisco and Miami by 2028, expanding to 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by 2031. Uber, shifting away from in-house self-driving tech, positions itself as a fleet intermediary to manage robotaxi platforms amid intense competition from Zoox, Waymo, Baidu, and Tesla.
Tilman Fertitta’s Fertitta Entertainment is negotiating to acquire Caesars Entertainment for about $6.5 billion in equity (roughly $32 per share) with an enterprise value near $31.5 billion, within a 45-day exclusive window; billionaire Carl Icahn has bid higher and could top the deal, which faces regulatory and shareholder scrutiny and isn’t expected to close until 2027.
Anduril Industries plans to acquire ExoAnalytic Solutions, a private operator of roughly 400 ground-based telescopes that monitor objects in orbit and provide space-domain awareness data to the U.S. government. The deal would significantly grow Anduril’s space division, folding ExoAnalytic into its space and engineering unit and integrating its tracking data with Anduril’s Lattice platform for fused sensing, with potential external sales of space-tracking data after regulatory approvals and concurrent plans to advance Anduril’s own space missions.
ITV Studios says Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are back in business as commissioners after their merger deal, signaling greater opportunities for ITV to place and source shows with the two groups; executives highlighted recent deals like Love & Marriage: Huntsville and The Guest as examples of the renewed access and growth potential in the global TV production and distribution landscape.
Paramount Skydance plans to merge Paramount+ with HBO Max to create one streaming service, leveraging a direct-to-consumer base of over 200 million to better compete with industry leaders; the combined catalog would include hit shows such as Yellowstone, Last Week Tonight, and The Sopranos on a single platform.
Netflix says it had a tight budget for pursuing Warner Bros., but Paramount kept raising its bid and ultimately won, leaving Netflix to walk away with a $2.8 billion breakup fee and no immediate M&A plans. The company will pivot toward theater partnerships (like One Piece in cinemas) and other strategic moves, while calling for DOJ scrutiny of Paramount to be as rigorous as it was with Netflix.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says the streamer is unlikely to pursue another acquisition in the near term after stepping away from Warner Bros. Discovery, planning to reinvest the $2.8B termination fee and pursue creative collaborations with theaters (e.g., Stranger Things, One Piece) rather than buying more assets.
Trump Media & Technology Group is considering spinning off its loss‑making Truth Social into a separate publicly traded shell and merging it with the Cayman Islands–based SPAC Texas Ventures Acquisition III, as part of a broader strategy that also includes a merger with fusion power company TAE Technologies. Details are scarce and no decision has been made; the move would create a pure‑play entity for Truth Social while the parent pursues other ventures, with Trump Media’s stock around $11 and a history of losses.