The media mogul offering to pay a 50% premium Media mogul Byron Allen has made a $14.3 billion offer to buy all of the outstanding shares of Paramount Global, according to people familiar with his terms.
Bloomberg reports Allen offered $28.58 each for the voting shares of Paramount, a 50% premium to recent trading, and $21.53 for the non-voting shares, according to the people, who asked to not be identified discussing terms that weren’t public. Including existing debt, the total value of the deal rises to about $30 billion.
His company, Allen Media Group, confirmed that he made an offer. “This $30 billion offer, which includes debt and equity, is the best solution for all of the Paramount Global shareholders, and the bid should be taken seriously and pursued,” Allen’s company said in the statement.
Paramount — one of the crown jewels in a global media empire controlled by the Redstone family — would be a tough deal to complete. The company generated operating income before depreciation and amortization of $1.87 billion in the first nine months of last year, a 30% decline from the year before. Sales, at $22 billion, were flat. Allen would be borrowing at a time of much higher interest rates than some of his previous acquisitions.
Allen’s plan, according to the people, is to sell the Paramount film studio, real estate and some other intellectual property. He will keep the TV channels, including the Paramount+ streaming service, and run them on a more cost-efficient basis. He has banks and other investors lined up, the people said.
Paramount, the parent of CBS, Nickelodeon and other channels, has been in play for months after independent producer David Ellison began discussing a buyout of the Redstone family’s shares last year.
A stand-up comic who branched into producing TV shows, Allen has spent more than $1 billion in recent years to acquire assets such as the Weather Channel and a string of local TV stations from Honolulu to Tucson. If he’s successful in his bid, he would roll his existing TV assets into the new company.
Allen has said he has a better chance of acquiring media assets than many because he’s already won regulatory approvals to own stations. His station group isn’t large enough to trigger limits on ownership, however.
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