The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US regulator vetting the deal's foreign-ownership implications, let its 1 July deadline pass without issuing the formal notice three Senate Democrats had demanded. Senators Booker, Warren and Schiff had asked Chair Brendan Carr on 18 June to tell Paramount the merger 'may not close' while Team Telecom, the interagency panel that screens foreign investment in communications, finished its review.1 As of 15 July no notice had gone out, and Carr said only that he awaits Team Telecom's findings.
This topic has tracked the European side as 'two clocks', and they are in fact two legally separate reviews. One examined the Gulf sovereign-wealth equity in the financing; the other, an ordinary competition review, turns on Paramount's film-distribution joint venture with Universal Pictures. Brussels pushed that competition deadline from 7 July to Wednesday 22 July to weigh Paramount's offer to withdraw from the venture.2
The FCC never converted the lapsed deadline into a clearance. It never issued the 'may not close' notice, but it never formally declined to either, so the foreign-ownership review sits dormant rather than resolved, with no published completion date. Paramount has separately asked the FCC to authorise foreign equity up to 100 per cent, four times the usual 25 per cent ceiling.
Strip out the noise and the merger now hangs on two things regulators can still say no to: the 22 July competition decision in Brussels and whatever a San Francisco court does with the states' restraining-order request. Everything else has either cleared or gone quiet.
