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The entire industry has been braced for merger and acquisition activity lately, and as we have reported recently here at Last Movie Outpost, Paramount was a prime candidate. Well, the path to boardroom harmony is rarely smooth.
According to reports in both The Wall Street Journal and Variety over the weekend, CEO of Paramount Global Bob Bakish is reportedly resigning under pressure as early as this morning – Monday. A committee of executives is expected to run the entertainment giant on an interim basis as potential merger activity is finalised.
Bakish has been with Paramount and its Viacom predecessor since 1997 and Paramount‘s board has been deep in in exclusive acquisition talks with Skydance Media and RedBird Capital, while Sony was waiting in the wings.
That exclusive negotiation window closes this coming Friday so a formal offer has to be on the table by then, or the door is open to other bidders. So the timing of this means it is easy to speculate on how it is connected.
Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management are poised with an all all-cash offer for the company should the Skydance situation not be resolved.
Insiders say that Skydance CEO David Ellison would take over the enlarged Paramount-Skydance entity. He would be bringing in his own number 2, the former NBCUniversal CEO and current RedBird senior executive Jeff Shell.
This would have left Bakish without a role in the go-forward operation. Paramount Global is set to report its first-quarter earnings today and reports indicate that Bakish will not lead that call as usual.
Despite the bump from Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount has seen major streaming losses and a share price fall over the last couple of years, leading to it becoming a takeover target.
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