How Often Do Hostile Takeovers Actually Work? Paramount Fights for WBD

Paramount Skydance has announced plans to lay siege to Warner Bros. Discovery in a high boardroom drama that feels like a throwback to the “Barbarians at the Gate” era of the 1980s.

But what share of hostile takeovers actually succeed?

About 24%.

That’s according to two law professors who studied a database of more than 54,000 M&A transactions from 1990-2005 for a paper entitled, “Who Writes the Rules for Hostile Takeovers, and Why? — The Peculiar Divergence of U.S. and U.K. Takeover Regulation.”

The paper — though a few years out of date — suggests that Netflix has the upper hand in the corporate battle. Netflix announced an $82.7 billion deal with WBD to acquire the Warner Bros. film studio and HBO last Friday. Paramount countered on Monday with a direct appeal to Warner Br