Barry Diller has confirmed he is out of the running for Paramount Global. His company, IAC, had been exploring a bid during the 45-day “go-shop” period provided for in the merger deal announced this month by Skydance Media and Paramount’s controlling shareholder, National Amusements.

During an interview in Paris with CNBC before the opening of the Summer Olympics, Diller expressed misgivings about having to step away, but said it came down to financial prudence. (Watch the clip below.) “It’s hard to predict, but I think it is over,” he said. “It is unwise to get in an auction with someone who has a pretty much unlimited balance sheet.” Of the $8 billion transaction, Diller estimated that Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and father of Skydance CEO David Ellison, is contributing, “I think, $6.2” billion. “They’ve stolen the company, essentially – ‘stolen’ is a harsh word,” Diller said. “But the method of how they got this cheap price, which is this wild valuation for a private production company, that averages their price wildly down.

Structurally, to compete with that, you have to put cash in. So if you have to put cash in, unfortunately, the structural disadvantage they have becomes an advantage because he can simply say, ‘Another billion?

Another two?’ And I did an auction for Paramount once. I don’t think I would do it again.” In one of the defining battles of the modern media age, the mogul dueled with Sumner Redstone in 1994 for control of Paramount, with Redstone ultimately prevailing with a proposal worth nearly $10 billion.

Barry Diller Says His Paramount Global Pursuit Is Over Given The “Unlimited” Resources Of Larry Ellison; Also Talks NBA Deal, Kamala Harris

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