The media mogul will be paid a $70 million severance package, on top of millions of dollars from the sale
Redstone will receive $70 million in a severance package, alone, to be paid by Skydance and its buying partners, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Skydance and Paramount originally reached an agreement in July for an $8 billion merger, in which Skydance, led by David Ellison, would acquire National Amusements and merge with Paramount, which itself owns media brands including MTV and CBS. But the deal had a “go-shop” period that allowed Paramount to consider other offers.
Edgar Bronfman, a business magnate and media executive from the family behind liquor empire Seagram Co., scraped together a last-minute bid for $4.3 billion and then upped that offer to $6 billion in August
Paramount extended its “go-shop” period to consider the offer, but Bronfman decided to abandon the deal.
Now the Skydance-Paramount deal is set to be finalized sometime in the first half of 2025. David Ellison, the son of Oracle $ORCL cofounder Larry Ellison, founded Skydance in 2006 to fund and produce media projects. Skydance’s first production, the box-office flop “Flyboys,” starred the younger Ellison. Skydance went on to co-finance and co-produce projects with Paramount for more than a decade.
As part of the deal, Bloomberg says Skydance, the Ellison family, and RedBird Capital Partners are paying $2.4 billion including liabilities for National Amusements. Redstone, who owns a 20% stake in National Amusements, will make about $350 million from the sale, in addition to the $70 million severance package and a $110 million pension liability.
National Amusement did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Quartz.
Skydance is also planning to invest $6 billion to buy shares of Paramount and pay off some of its debt. Paramount will then merge with Skydance, with Ellison leading the new company.
- Ben Kesslen contributed to this report.
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