The entertainment giant Paramount Global will merge with Skydance Media LLC, closing out a decades long run by the Redstone family in Hollywood and injecting desperately needed cash into a legacy studio that has struggled to adapt to a shifting entertainment landscape.
It also signals rise of a new power player, David Ellison, the founder of Skydance and son of billionaire Larry Ellison, the founder of the software company Oracle Corp.
Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc has owned more than three-quarters of Paramount’s Class A voting shares through the estate of her late father, Sumner Redstone. She had battled to maintain control of the company that owns CBS, which is behind blockbuster films such as “Top Gun" and “The Godfather.”
Photo: AP
Just weeks after turning down a similar agreement with Skydance, however, Redstone agreed to a deal on terms that had not changed much.
“Given the changes in the industry, we want to fortify Paramount for the future while ensuring that content remains king,” Paramount Global chair Shari Redstone said.
The new combined company is valued at around US$28 billion.
Skydance, based in Santa Monica, California, has helped produce some major Paramount hits in recent years, including Tom Cruise films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and installments of the “Mission Impossible” series.
Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison and it quickly formed a production partnership with Paramount that same year. David Ellison, if the deal is approved by US regulators, will become chairman and chief executive officer of what’s being called New Paramount.
The on-again, off-again merger arrives at a tumultuous time for Paramount, which in an annual shareholder meeting in early last month laid out a restructuring plan that includes major cost cuts.
Leadership at Paramount has been volatile this year after its CEO Bob Bakish, following a number of disputes with Shari Redstone, was replaced with an “office of the C.E.O,” run by three executives. Four company directors were also replaced.
Paramount, however, has struggled to find its footing for years and its cable business has been hemorrhaging. To capture today’s growing streaming audience, the company launched Paramount+ back in 2021, but losses and debts have continued to grow.
Sumner Redstone used National Amusements, his family’s movie theater chain, to build a vast media empire that included CBS Corp and Viacom Inc, which have merged and separated a number of times over the years. Most recently, the companies re-joined forces in 2019, undoing the split consummated in 2006. The company, ViacomCBS, changed its name to Paramount Global in 2022.
Under Sumner Redstone’s leadership, Viacom became one of the nation’s media titans, home to pay TV channels MTV and Comedy Central and movie studio Paramount Pictures.
It is a company with a rich history, as well as a deep bank of media assets, and Skydance wasn’t the only one to gun for Paramount in recent months — Apollo Global Management Inc and Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc also made competing offers.
Late last year, Warner Bros Discovery Inc also made headlines for exploring a potential merger with Paramount. But by February, Warner had reportedly halted those talks.
EXPANSION: The investment came as ASE in July told investors it would accelerate capacity growth to mitigate supply issues, and would boost spending by 16 percent ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it is investing NT$17.6 billion (US$578.6 million) to build a new advanced chip packaging facility in Kaohsiung to cope with fast-growing demand from artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and automotive applications. The new fab, called K18B, is to commence operation in the first quarter of 2028, offering chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) chip packaging and final testing services, ASE said in a statement. The fab is to create 2,000 new jobs upon its completion, ASE said. A wide spectrum of system-level chip packaging technologies would be available at
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
HEAVYWEIGHT: The TAIEX ended up 382.67 points, with about 280 of those points contributed by TSMC shares alone, which rose 2.56 percent to close at NT$1,400 Shares in Taiwan broke records at the end of yesterday’s session after contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a fresh closing-high amid enthusiasm toward artificial intelligence (AI) development, dealers said. The TAIEX ended up 382.67 points, or 1.45 percent, at the day’s high of 26,761.06. Turnover totaled NT$463.09 billion (US$15.22 billion). “The local main board has repeatedly hit new closing highs in the past few sessions as investors continued to embrace high hopes about AI applications, taking cues from a strong showing in shares of US-based AI chip designer Nvidia Corp,” Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌證券) analyst Kevin Su
Nvidia Corp’s major server production partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) reported 10.99 percent year-on-year growth in quarterly sales, signaling healthy demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Revenue totaled NT$2.06 trillion (US$67.72 billion) in the last quarter, in line with analysts’ projections, a company statement said. On a quarterly basis, revenue was up 14.47 percent. Hon Hai’s businesses cover four primary product segments: cloud and networking, smart consumer electronics, computing, and components and other products. Last quarter, “cloud and networking products delivered strong growth, components and other products demonstrated significant growth, while smart consumer electronics and computing products slightly declined,” compared with the
RSS