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Skydance Paramount’s Deal for Redstone’s National Amusements Revived
Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements, speaks at the WSJ Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., on Oct. 21, 2019.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Skydance by David Ellison has reached a preliminary agreement with Shari Redstone’s National Amusements to merge with Paramountaccording to two people familiar with the matter, resurrecting a agreement that had failed just a few weeks earlier.
Controlling shareholder National Entertainment forwarded the agreement to the Paramount Special Committeeaccording to people familiar with the matter. Paramount’s special committee is currently reviewing and voting on the deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Paramount spokesman declined to comment.
Paramount shares rose as much as 9% on the news.
The resurrected deal will see Redstone receive a reduced consideration of $1.75 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The other financial terms of the deal, which CNBC previously reported, will remain unchanged: Skydance will acquire roughly half of Paramount’s controlling stock at $15 per share for $4.5 billion and will contribute $1.5 billion to Paramount’s balance sheet.
Redstone killed the initial bid in June as it was close to the finish line. One of Redstone’s reasons was that she felt Skydance had renegotiated the deal by asking her to accept hundreds of millions of dollars less than the previously agreed-upon payment, according to one of the people.
The settlement process had already led to the departure of CEO Bob Bakish earlier this year, leaving in place a three-headed CEO office to run the company. Other interested bidders included a joint effort from private equity firm Apollo and Sonyas well as a recent plea by Barry Diller, chairman of the media conglomerate FALLS as well as a former Paramount executive.
The preliminary agreement was first reported by The New York Times It is Wall Street Journal.
— CNBC’s Julia Boorstin contributed to this report.