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Aryeh Bourkoff’s LionTree Has a Stake in Hollywood’s Merger Era

LionTree helped advise Skydance’s $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. With an investment fund participating in the financing, Bourkoff's firm is doing more than negotiating Hollywood's biggest deals.

Beyond the Hollywood executives choosing scripts and greenlighting projects, one banker works behind the scenes to help shape who owns the studios in the first place. Aryeh Bourkoff, founder and CEO of global investment and merchant banking firm LionTree, has his fingerprints on deals involving Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, MGM and more. Since its founding in 2012, LionTree has advised on more than 300 transactions across media, telecommunications and technology totaling more than $1 trillion in collective value.

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Bourkoff and his team advised Paramount Global on its merger with Skydance Media and subsequently served as financial advisers to Paramount Skydance on its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which closed Oct. 6. The deal, valued at roughly $110 billion including debt, consolidated Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO, CNN and CBS under a single corporate umbrella renamed Skydance Corporation.

But LionTree did more than help negotiate the transaction. A LionTree-advised investment fund also participated in the deal’s $47 billion equity financing, alongside investors including the Ellison family, RedBird Capital Partners and sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. The Ellison family and RedBird retained 100 percent of the combined company’s voting shares, while other investors received nonvoting Class B common stock.

LionTree did not disclose how much its fund committed to the transaction. But a May regulatory filing reported nearly $1.57 billion in gross assets for LionTree Investment Fund, L.P., one of several funds managed by LionTree Investment Management. The figure does not represent the firm’s contribution to Skydance, but it offers a glimpse of the capital managed within Bourkoff’s investment business.

That dual role is increasingly central to LionTree’s appeal. Bourkoff’s firm can advise companies on mergers and acquisitions while affiliated funds invest in businesses and industries where it sees opportunities for growth. The overlap also raises questions about how the firm separates its advisory and investment responsibilities.

LionTree did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Over the years, Bourkoff has helped shape the ownership and financing structures behind conglomerates that determine what content gets........

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