Nearly thirteen months after Shari Redstone and David Ellison came to terms, following months of back-and-forth, on a megadeal that will transfer ownership of Paramount Global, there’s now a close date in sight: August 7.
The new company will also trade on Nasdaq as “PSKY,” it disclosed in a securities filing on Friday. The agreement clears the way for Top Gun: Maverick producer Ellison’s media firm Skydance to merge with the owner of Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, CBS, Showtime, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and Comedy Central.
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Brendan Carr, approved the deal, which was seen as the final hurdle to the close after a fraught few months of speculation involving how President Trump may have influenced discussions given his $16 million settlement with the company in his legal battle with CBS News’ 60 Minutes.
Last July, Skydance Media and Paramount Global said that they had agreed to a merger proposal that would include the Ellison family and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners investing $2.4 billion to buy Redstone’s holding company National Amusements. The bid values a merged Skydance-Paramount at $28 billion.
The past twelve months have been a rollercoaster of a ride for Paramount, its executives and its thousands of employees. A month after the deal was agreed upon in principle, the leaders of Paramount — an “Office of the CEO” that includes George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins — outlined a plan to cut more than $500 million in costs and sell off assets in order to shift the company’s portfolio away from its linear TV business that had been in decline.
Part of that included reducing its U.S.-based workforce by 15 percent, a figure that was upped by another 3.5 percent just last month. Paramount had about 18,600 employees worldwide as of the end of last year.
Its leadership is also expected to change dramatically as well. Ellison will take on the CEO role at what’s been dubbed New Paramount (in an investor presentation last year the logo of the company was reshaped to look like Skydance Media’s), while former NBCUniversal executive Jeff Shell will be installed as president. As for the “Office of the CEO” trio that currently lead the company, McCarthy is confirmed to be exiting Paramount at deal close while Robbins is expected to depart and Cheeks may remain, although the status of those execs remains up in the air officially.
More to come.
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