Skydance sweetens offer for Paramount Global, source says

By Dawn Chmielewski

(Reuters) -Skydance Media has submitted a sweetened offer for its proposed merger with Paramount Global, according to a person familiar with the matter, the latest twist in a tumultuous negotiation process.

The new deal is said to offer improved terms for both voting and non-voting Paramount shareholders, and provides more cash, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Specific details of the offer from the independent studio led by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, could not immediately be determined.

A spokesperson for a special committee of the Paramount board, which was created to evaluate such offers, declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the improved offer, which comes at a fraught moment for Paramount, home to the storied Paramount Pictures studio, the CBS broadcast network and cable networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV.

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish stepped down last month in the middle of deal talks amid growing tensions with the company's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone. Four board members will depart after the company's annual meeting on June 4.

Meanwhile, a rival bidder, Sony Pictures Entertainment, in partnership with Apollo Global Management, emerged late in the deal process, submitting a non-binding all-cash offer of $26 billion. It has since backed away from that initial proposal in favor of a more limited approach, according to a second source familiar with the matter.

Skydance has spent months in negotiations with Paramount.

David Ellison and his deal partners RedBird Capital and KKR initially proposed a two-step transaction in which they would pay roughly $2 billion to acquire the Redstone family's holding company, National Amusements, which owns about 77% of Paramount's class-A voting stock.

Paramount would then acquire Skydance in an all-stock transaction worth about $5 billion. Some major investors balked at that deal, which was perceived as favoring Redstone.

Skydance subsequently offered a $3 billion deal sweetener including a mix of share buybacks and cash that could be used to pay down debt.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Deepa Babington and Jamie Freed)