Baidu Inc (百度) considered participating in a bid for a stake in Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures, though it is not currently in negotiations, people familiar with the matter said.
The search engine giant had contemplated working with DMG Entertainment & Media Co, a Chinese company that has co-produced films such as Iron Man 3 and is seeking a larger role in Hollywood, the people said.
The effort ended in late May when it became clear that Viacom’s controlling shareholders, the Redstone family, opposed the sale, the people said.
Viacom’s attempts to sell a minority stake in the studio have been complicated by the power struggle at the media company.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that Dalian Wanda Group Co (大連萬達集團) is in talks to buy 49 percent of Paramount, citing unnamed sources, though on Friday Sumner Redstone and his family reiterated their opposition to such an agreement.
A Wanda transaction would value Paramount at US$8 billion to US$10 billion, the Journal said.
The Paramount stake is a tougher target for either party because Viacom is locked in a three-state legal battle for control of the company that pits chief executive officer Philippe Dauman against his former mentor, Sumner Redstone, who could potentially veto any deal.
According to a Delaware court ruling, Viacom must give Redstone five days’ written notice before making any moves involving Paramount.
In court filings and in public statements to the press, Redstone and his daughter Shari Redstone have said they have been denied information about the Paramount sale process.
“Any short-term benefits that might result from a Paramount transaction would be outweighed by the severe negative impact on Viacom’s future strategic flexibility to best capitalize on this important asset,” National Amusements Inc, the Redstones’ firm that controls Viacom, said in a statement on Friday.
Sumner Redstone, 93, is trying to remove Dauman and George Abrams, another former confidant, from a family trust that will one day oversee his affairs.
He has also sought to eject them from the board of National Amusements and from their roles at Viacom, which also owns MTV and Comedy Central.
National Amusements controls almost 80 percent of the voting stock at Viacom and has a similar stake in CBS Corp.
Dauman contends that Sumner Redstone is no longer mentally competent to make such decisions and alleges that he is being improperly influenced by Shari.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained