The long game is not going on three dates before making a move. The long game is not doing yoga every morning. The long game is becoming a billionaire’s gardener in the hope that he leaves you billions of dollars to spite a charitable foundation. And for one French jardinier, it may be about to pay off.

The lowdown

• 🎬 Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount discuss a possible merger.

• 🚗 Toyota shares slide after recalling about a million vehicles.

• 🙅‍♂️ Social media platform X is back up after a global outage.

Flex your finance muscle 💪

Merger of equals

With entertainment giants Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount contemplating a tie-up, let’s explore the difficulty of combining two companies of this scale. Sometimes, when two similar-sized companies merge, it’s referred to as a merger of equals.

On paper this is accurate: both companies trade in their shares and receive stock in the new entity that’s proportionate to their sizes. But some would argue there’s no such thing as a true merger of equals, and one company will always end up taking over the other.

Here are three challenges to consider:

• Leadership. The big question is who will be the CEO? One of the leaders of the combining companies will lose out, creating inequalities at the top.

• Organizational structure. Some mergers decide on the co-CEO route, but this doesn’t solve the problem for the rest of the C-suite. Ad giants Omnicom and Publicis tried it in 2014, but ended up bickering over who would fill key jobs such as CFO. Ultimately the $35 billion deal collapsed.

• Culture. When two big companies combine, two strong cultures clash. Whose will prevail? Culture runs through a company, so an unclear direction can cause tensions at every level.

Featured story

Hermes billionaire wants to give his fortune to his gardener

Nicholas Puech is in a bind. The 80-year-old descendent of Europe’s richest family no longer wants to bequeath his fortune to a foundation he started. Unfortunately, an inheritance contract requires Puech to leave his shares in Hermes, the French luxury giant his family started, to the Isocrates Foundation.

But there’s a way out. The contract says if Puech becomes a father, his child would be entitled to part of the inheritance, and at least 50% in the case of a son. So he’s begun the process of adopting his middle-aged gardener and plans to leave him at least half of his roughly €12 billion ($13 billion) fortune.

The Isocrates Foundation, which works towards a healthy digital space, says it’s opposing the cancellation of the contract but isn’t in a position to judge Puech’s adoption plan. If the plan works, a humble gardener could find himself owning an estimated 3% stake in one of the world’s biggest luxury companies. But I’m sure your annual bonus was great too.

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Off-balance sheet items

• It’s another year-end wrap-up. Here are the top grossing movies of 2023, and Oppenheimer isn’t in the top two.

The bottom line