Paramount seeks to settle with 12 US states. Most such cases ended in a ruling.

What happened

The Financial Times reported on 19 September 2026 that Paramount is in advanced talks to settle the antitrust case brought by twelve state attorneys general against its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount is in advanced talks to settle with twelve US states. The states brought an antitrust case, a case under competition law, to stop Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery.

Twelve state attorneys general, the top lawyers of their states, filed the case on 13 July 2026 in the federal district court in Oakland, led by Rob Bonta of California. It is now the only thing standing between the two companies and a deal worth about $81bn. The federal government never sued at all.

Two days before the report, the Federal Communications Commission approved the foreign investment in the merged company. That cleared the last regulator in the way.

The court has set settlement talks for 14 and 15 October. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson ordered both sides to a two-day settlement meeting in San Francisco, closed to the public.

Before that, on 24 September, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín hears Paramount’s request that the states put up a bond of $1.88bn. It would cover the $7m a day that Paramount starts paying Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders on 1 October while the case is open. If nothing settles, the final pre-trial hearing is on 24 February 2027 and the trial starts on 2 March 2027.

Both companies filed their answer to the complaint on 11 September, which is what a party does when it is getting ready for trial. Eight days later came the report of settlement talks. Both things can be true at the same time.

Sources: Financial Times, Reuters, court register, order of

The Pattern

We found nine cases since 2019 like this one. In each, a US competition authority, the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department or a group of state attorneys general, went to a federal court to stop a merger that had already been announced. We counted the days from the filing to the day the court closed the case, whatever closed it: a settlement, a ruling for either side, or the companies walking away. We checked whether each was over within 232 days, the gap here between the filing and the first day of trial.

The Read

History points to a long case. Only three of the nine were over within 232 days. The two fastest, at 108 and 119 days, both ended with the buyer accepting conditions. The next took 207 days, and all but one of the cases after it ended with a judge’s ruling. So the real question is whether Paramount and the states settle now, in the window the court has built for talks, or spend the winter getting ready for a trial on 2 March.

This case is different in two ways. Waiting has a price: from 1 October Paramount pays Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders $7m a day while the case is open. And nobody else is left to please. The Federal Communications Commission signed off on 17 September and the federal government never sued, so twelve state attorneys general are holding up an $81bn deal on their own.

That is also where the record is weakest. Only one of the nine cases was brought by states, T-Mobile and Sprint, and the states took it all the way to a ruling and lost. Some of the other cases came from the same agency at the same time, so the nine are closer to six separate decisions, and four of those six came from federal agencies under one president. There is no market on the 24 September bond hearing, because these cases show when cases close and say nothing about how judges rule on bonds.