The Paramount merger is a mess. Can an FCC rule change save it?
Major shareholder Mario Gabelli weighs joining the NYC pensions' case against Paramount & Skydance. Edgar Bronfman Jr. gets ready to testify.
A few years ago, I talked to some folks who were potential buyers of Paramount Global. They told me they had no interest, and if they ever moved on it, it would be to pick-over its carcass.
Paramount’s problems are mounting. Can the three man CEO team, or the directors, or the ailing controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, figure out the tangle of confusion that has beset this once great company? Paramount once owned the youth audience via MTV; CBS had a primetime schedule the envy of all of network TV and Viacom was among the first to encircle the globe with cable channels like Nickelodeon. But everyone on the outside knew it would end this way - surrounded by a barbed wire fence of legal disputes.
The hoped for merger with David Ellison’s Skydance now has a 50:50 chance of survival, according to one person close to the deal. Mario Gabelli, the CEO of Gamco Investors, the second biggest shareholder in the company behind Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, has an idea.
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