David Ellison’s Skydance has sweetened its offer to acquire Paramount Global, Deadline has learned, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the company’s Class B stockholders after they trashed the outlines of a previous deal and threatened to sue. Ellison’s original offer was to buy out Par’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone for a significant premium, resulting in a windfall for her, and then merge Skydance into Paramount keeping the combined company public. Stockholders wanted to be bought out at a premium as well.
Skydance, backed by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital, sweetened the offer once late last month — offering to buy out a certain number of shares from stockholders other than Redstone — as an exclusive monthlong negotiating period with Par ended. But it wasn’t enough to woo holders of the Class B non-voting stock, who are the majority of shareholders, or even some of the A. Related Stories News David Zaslav Is Talking M&A Again As WBD Pays Down Debt, Expands Max Globally News Paramount, Charter Extend Carriage Deal With Hotly Anticipated Multiyear Agreement That Includes Paramount+ The parameters of the revised bid couldn’t be learned immediately but Deadline understands that Skydance is putting more money in and restructuring the deal to make it more palatable to the Class B folks.
As the Skydance exclusive talks ended with no deal, Sony jumped in for a $26 billion bid with private equity giant Apollo.