Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements, speaks at the WSJ Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on October 21, 2019.
Mike Blake | Reuters
David Ellison's Skydance has reached a preliminary agreement with Shari Redstone's National Amusements to merge with Supremeaccording to two people familiar with the matter, resurrecting a deal that fell apart just weeks earlier.
According to people familiar with the matter, majority shareholder National Amusements has referred the deal to Paramount’s special committee. Paramount’s special committee is currently reviewing and voting on the deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Paramount spokesman declined to comment.
Paramount shares rose as much as 9% on the news.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the resurrected deal will see Redstone receive a reduced consideration of $1.75 billion. The other financial terms of the deal, which CNBC previously reported, will remain unchanged: Skydance will acquire roughly half of Paramount’s controlling stock at $15 per share, for $4.5 billion, and will contribute $1.5 billion to Paramount’s balance sheet.
Redstone rejected the initial offer in June, as it was nearing completion. One of Redstone’s reasons was that he felt Skydance had re-negotiated the deal by asking him to accept hundreds of millions of dollars less than the previously agreed-upon payment, according to one of the people.
The liquidation process had already prompted the departure of CEO Bob Bakish earlier this year, leaving in his place a three-CEO office to run the company. Other interested bidders included a joint effort by private equity firm Apollo and Sonyas well as a recent plea from Barry Diller, chairman of the media conglomerate CAI as well as a former Paramount executive.
The preliminary agreement was first reported by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
— CNBC's Julia Boorstin contributed to this report.
