Skydance Media has “reached a preliminary agreement” to buy Shari Redstone’s family company National Amusements and merge with Paramount Global, “rekindling deal talks that fizzled last month,” according to Jessica Toonkel and Lauren Thomas of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Sources said that National Amusements, which owns about 77% of the voting shares of Paramount Global, “plans to refer the new deal to a special committee of the entertainment company’s directors for review.” Sources said that under the proposed deal, Skydance would pay $1.75B for National Amusements and that the two companies have agreed to a 45-day “go-shop period” in which other interested Paramount bidders can make offers for the company. If the deal goes through, it would “mark a new chapter for the iconic Hollywood company.” Toonkel and Thomas report that under the new preliminary agreement, National Amusements “isn’t mandating that the Paramount merger be approved by a majority of non-Redstone shareholders,” something that was “a sticking point in the last round of deal talks.” But the special committee “must bless the terms of the merger.” Under the terms of the deal that fell apart a few weeks ago, Skydance would have bought National Amusements for around $1.7B in cash and would have provided $4.5B to “buy out a certain number of Paramount’s nonvoting shares and non-Redstone voting shares.” Skydance also would have injected $1.5B onto Paramount’s balance sheet, which it “could use to pay down its hefty debt load” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 7/2).
