By Dawn Chmielewski and Anirban Sen
(Reuters) – Media veteran Edgar Bronfman Jr. dropped out of the race for Paramount Global on Monday, clearing the way for Skydance Media to take control of Shari Redstone's media empire and ending one of the most chaotic media bidding wars in recent history.
In a statement, Bronfman said her bidding group had informed Paramount's special committee on Monday night of its decision to drop out of the process.
“We continue to believe that Paramount Global is an extraordinary company, with an unrivaled collection of world-class brands, assets and people,” Bronfman said in a statement. “While there may have been differences, we believe that everyone involved in the sale process is united in the belief that Paramount's best days are ahead.”
Paramount's special committee of the board said in a statement that it had concluded a “shopping” period, in which it reached out to more than 50 parties to gauge their interest in acquiring the media company. The company expects the Skydance deal to close in the first half of 2025, pending regulatory approval, it said.
Paramount's Class B shares fell 5.2% to $10.75 in premarket trading Tuesday.
Bronfman was unable to put together the equity financing package that was required for his bid, a source familiar with the matter said. Some of Bronfman's key equity partners in the deal backed out at the last minute, dashing any hopes he had of mounting a serious challenge to Skydance's bid, the source added.
Last week, a group of investors led by Bronfman proposed taking control of Paramount through a $6 billion bid that would buy out the media company's controlling shareholder, National Amusements.
That bid for Paramount — home to its namesake movie studio, the CBS broadcast network and cable networks including Nickelodeon and Comedy Central — had threatened to derail an $8.4 billion deal reached by Paramount and Skydance in July.
“Having thoroughly explored viable opportunities for Paramount for nearly eight months, our Special Committee continues to believe that the transaction we have agreed to with Skydance offers immediate value and the potential for continued participation in value creation in a rapidly evolving industry landscape,” said Charles Phillips Jr., Chairman of the Paramount Special Committee.
A spokesman for Redstone, owner of National Amusements, could not immediately be reached for comment. Skydance declined to comment.
Bronfman's bid depended on participation from high-net-worth individuals, some of whom were baffled to see their names appearing in news reports about the offer, said two people familiar with the process.
One of the people said that after commitments from at least one party were not met, Bronfman and the team rushed to replace the financing but ran out of time.
The veteran media executive decided to withdraw from the bidding process, rather than submit a bid to Paramount's special committee that the team knew would be rejected, one of the sources said.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
