Skydance Credit Rating Downgraded by Fitch on Massive Debt in Wake of Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

By Jennifer Maas

Jennifer Maas

TV Business Writer

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The new Skydance‘s ability to repay its massive debt following the megamerger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery is being called into question by credit rating agency Fitch.

Led by CEO David Ellison, Skydance opened for business Tuesday with a nearly unprecedented level of debt for a large media M&A transaction at around $80 billion. By comparison, when Discovery Communications bought WarnerMedia from AT&T, it assumed $43 billion of AT&T’s debt, leaving the new WBD with about $53 billion in gross debt as of June 2022.

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