Skydance Media’s offer to buy out Paramount Global seemed to be the end of their long and winding road to a sale. These companies and a key shareholder backed the bid.
An extra group of Paramount’s board members voted in favour of merging with David Ellison’s Skydance studio.
Skydance would buy National Amusements, which is owned by Shari Redstone and controls Paramount. This is the first step in the deal. After that, Skydance and Paramount would join together.
“In 1987, my dad, Sumner Redstone, bought Viacom and started putting together and growing the companies that are now called Paramount Global.” In his mind, “content was king,” and he was always dedicated to providing top-notch content for all audiences around the world, Redstone said in a statement. “Because the business is changing, we want to make Paramount stronger for the future while making sure that content stays king.”
According to Ellison, they plan to bring new technology, new leadership, and a creative discipline to the company in order to energise it and make it stronger. This will help future generations.
People who own shares in Paramount Class B PARA, +3.05% will get either $15 in cash or one share of the new company. That’s 48% more than what it cost on July 1.
In pre-market trade, Paramount Class B shares went up 4% to $12.34.
People who own Class A shares in PARAA, +1.84% will get $23 in cash for each share, which is equal to 1.5333 Class B shares.
In premarket trade, that class went up 7% to $22. RedBird Capital Partners, which is also a partner in the buyout, and the Ellison family will own 70% of the company when the deal is done.
For months, there have been rumours of a deal for Paramount. Skydance seemed close to making a deal in June, but at the last minute, talks stopped. They started up again a few weeks later.
CBS, cable networks like MTV and Comedy Central, the movie studio with the same name, and the streaming service Paramount+ are all owned by Paramount.
Lars Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle Corp., runs Skydance as a separate production company. Skydance and Paramount have worked together on a number of films in the past, such as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning.”
