The British government has cleared Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying it had received assurances from the company over media diversity.

On Thursday, the UK’s anti-trust regulator said that it had decided not to further investigate the deal, weeks after British culture minister Lisa Nandy said she was considering intervening.

“We have cleared this deal as it does not raise competition concerns in the UK. The evidence shows that, after the merger, Paramount will continue to face sufficient competition in the various areas it operates in,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement.

The UK’s culture department also said Paramount had provided several assurances, including that it would maintain “distinct editorial identities of key services and the editorial independence of news.” The company has offered to make those assurances legally binding, the department said in a statement.

It follows the European Union’s decision last month to approve the Paramount-WBD tie-up conditional on Paramount exiting a joint venture with Universal Pictures in the region, alongside other commitments.

Paramount originally said it expected the merger to take effect by the end of September, but later agreed to delay the deal after a coalition of US state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America both filed lawsuits seeking to block it. A trial is currently set for March 2027.

The delay will prove costly. Under the merger agreement, Paramount must pay WBD shareholders roughly $7 million for every day after September 30 that the deal has not closed. A March trial date means Paramount will owe well over $1 billion in so-called “ticking fees” before the judge ever rules.

Paramount said in a Thursday statement that the UK and EU decisions “further demonstrate the misguided and gerrymandered market definitions relied upon by the US state (attorneys general) in their antitrust complaint in California.”

“The combination of Paramount and WBD will enhance consumer choice… (and will create a media company) capable of competing with the tech companies that have come to dominate the industry,” it said in the statement. (CNN)

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