Billionaire Mario Gabelli, a key voting shareholder in the holding company that controls Paramount, said he may remain an investor if the media giant merges with Skydance — despite his earlier skepticism about such a tie-up.
Earlier this week, heiress Shari Redstone surprised media insiders with her announcement that she was accepting a merger proposal from Skydance — the Hollywood studio that Paramount has partnered with to produce the “Mission: Impossible” franchise — despite rejecting a deal just weeks earlier.
“Shari did this right,” Gabelli told The Post in an exclusive interview on Friday. “She backed off and got something more appealing.”
In particular, Gabelli said it appears that the new Skydance deal is a better one for minority shareholders including Gabelli, a previous sticking point.
Under the new arrangement, National Amusements — the holding company that controls Paramount’s voting shares, in which Redstone owns a 77% stake and Gabelli owns a majority of the rest — is not mandating that the Paramount merger be approved by a majority of non-Redstone shareholders.
While the shrewd media investor has remained mostly silent over the past several months of negotiations, insiders believed the threat of a lawsuit from Gabelli over the Skydance deal was a key impediment to getting it done.
“I may not sell stock if there is a deal with Skydance. I need to see the structure of the transaction,” Gabelli said, adding that currently he has no opinion yet on the merger. “Until I figure out the details of this deal we are on hold.”
On the face of it, however, Gabelli said the numbers appeared favorable.
“If Skydance is paying $1.75 billion for NAI and NAI has $500 million of debt that’s $1.25 billion left for NAI shareholders,” Gabelli said. “That’s $20 per share.”
Paramount shares on Friday recently changed hands at $11.52, up 0.5%.
Gabelli added that he is not going to the annual “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley next week, but said it will be interesting to see who Shari meets with there.
He’ll be especially curious to see whether Redstone is caught meeting with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who has signaled on-again, off-again interest in a Paramount deal.
“Zaslav wants to do something one-on-one with Shari because Netflix has such a big advantage on both of them,” Gabelli said.
He also noted, however, that there still is some question as to whether Skydance can get a deal through the Federal Communications Commission.
“Under current law, a change of 25% of ownership requires FCC approval.”
The century-old Paramount Pictures is known for films such as “Titanic”, “The Godfather” and the “Transformers” franchise.
Skydance CEO David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has spent months in pursuit of Paramount, a combination that Redstone, daughter of late media tycoon Sumner Redstone, enthusiastically embraced, according to reports.
She nonetheless nixed the original deal, after Skydance adjusted its offer to provide more money for other shareholders.
National Amusements owns movie theaters in the United States, Britain and Latin America, and holds the Redstone family’s 77% of Paramount’s class A voting stock.
Ariel Zilber contributed reporting
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