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FCC Clears Gulf Sovereign Funds to Take 49.5% Stake in Paramount
The FCC has approved Paramount Skydance's plan to sell indirect equity stakes totaling 49.5% to sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, waiving the statutory 25% foreign ownership ceiling on broadcast licensees. The $24 billion…
A Statutory Cap Waived, a $24 Billion Gulf Bet Cleared
The Federal Communications Commission on September 17, 2026 approved Paramount Skydance's petition to exceed the foreign ownership ceiling written into US broadcast law — clearing the path for sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar to collectively hold 49.5% of the company's equity. Under 47 U.S.C. § 310, any entity holding FCC broadcast licenses requires commission approval before indirect foreign ownership crosses 25%; Paramount, which owns and operates 28 local CBS stations, filed for a waiver and received it.
The capital structure keeps Gulf investors in non-voting territory. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund will contribute $10 billion; the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi's L'imad Holding Co. will each add $7 billion, bringing the combined Gulf commitment to $24 billion. The Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners retain 100% of Paramount's Class A voting shares. The foreign investors receive only Class B non-voting shares.
The $24 billion forms part of the financing for Paramount's pending $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — a merger that would unite two major film studios, fold Paramount+ into HBO Max, and hand Paramount ownership of CNN. The acquisition has not closed: several US states have filed suit to block it, though the Trump administration's Department of Justice has cleared the deal.
Process, Dissent, and the Influence Question
The approval was issued as a staff-level declaratory ruling by the FCC's Media Bureau rather than put to a full commission vote — a procedural choice that drew sharp criticism from FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the commission's sole Democrat. Gomez argued the ruling had been "snuck out" without public accountability: "An investment this large in one of America's biggest media companies doesn't just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and what gets made."
The FCC's own order relies on Paramount's assertion that foreign investors "will not have any ability to influence the company's editorial decision-making or news or entertainment content or to access its viewers' personal data." The commission concluded the arrangement is in the public interest.
Senate Democrats raised a parallel concern in a May 2026 letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr — arguing that the governments behind these funds "systematically suppress press freedom in their own countries" and have made investments and gifts to entities connected to the president and his family, creating potential conflicts around both media independence and corruption. Carr had signaled the outcome as early as March 2026, calling it "a good deal" that should clear the commission "pretty quickly."
The commission's order also leaves room for the foreign ownership share to move beyond 49.5%, permitting "up to 100 percent indirect foreign equity interest of Paramount, in the aggregate" to account for market fluctuations and potential future investments — a ceiling that materially exceeds what Paramount's current deal structures imply.
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