Paramount Skydance board to include David Ellison, Sherry Lansing, Oracle's Safra Catz
Ellison will serve as chairman of the board.
The board is scheduled to reconstitute Thursday with the close of Skydance Media's $8.4-billion acquisition of Paramount Global.
Only one current Paramount board member — Barbara Byrne — will remain. Paramount's current chairwoman, Shari Redstone, and others are set to exit, handing over the legendary entertainment company that includes CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Showtime and Melrose Avenue's century-old movie studio, Paramount Pictures, to the new group of owners.
The board tilts heavily toward firms that have a financial stake: The Larry Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners, backers of Skydance Media that have helped finance the Paramount transaction.
The incoming panel also represents a power-sharing arrangement. The Ellisons have five designates on the board, including David Ellison and Catz, a longtime Oracle executive who has served as its CEO since 2019. (She also is a previous Walt Disney Co. director.)
The private equity firm has two representatives: RedBird founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale and John L. Thornton, the firm's chairman.
In addition, two executives with RedBird ties — Jeff Shell and Andy Gordon — will take board seats. Both are joining Paramount from RedBird as senior executives. Shell, a former NBCUniversal chief executive, is becoming Paramount's president, while Gordon, a longtime Goldman Sachs banker, has been named Paramount's chief operating and chief strategy officer.
Paul Marinelli, president of Larry Ellison-backed Lawrence Investments, will join the board.
There will be three independent board members, including Byrne, Justin G. Hamill, a managing director of Silver Lake, and Lansing, who was a groundbreaking executive in Hollywood and popular steward of Paramount more than two decades ago.
'We are thrilled and honored to welcome this truly outstanding group of director-designees to our board,' David Ellison said in a statement.
The Federal Communications Commission, led by President Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr, approved the Skydance-Paramount merger two weeks ago after months of turmoil. The FCC's 2-1 vote came after Paramount agreed last month to pay Trump $16 million to settle the president's lawsuit over edits to a '60 Minutes' broadcast.
The FCC approval removed the last hurdle, allowing the Skydance purchase to move forward.
Redstone, the daughter of entertainment titan Sumner Redstone, and Paramount's board agreed to the Skydance takeover in July 2024. As part of the transaction, the Redstone family investment firm National Amusements will receive $2.4 billion for its controlling shares in the company. The family will come away with $1.75 billion after National Amusements' considerable debts are paid.
The Redstone shares will pass to Larry Ellison and RedBird, which will hold a minority stake in National Amusements.
The deal is expected to inject $1.5 billion into Paramount's balance sheet to help the firm pay down debt. More than $4 billion was set aside to buy back shares of current Paramount shareholders.
Santa Monica-based Skydance will eventually be folded into Paramount.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Nvidia, chip stocks jump after Trump says some chipmakers exempt from 100% semiconductor tariff
Chip stocks climbed on Thursday after President Trump said he'll exempt companies from his planned semiconductor tariffs if they have committed to making their chips in the US. 'We'll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,' Trump said during a press conference at the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon. 'But if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge.' 'If you've made a commitment to build or if you're in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff.' Leading AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) stock rose as much as 2.5% Thursday to a fresh intraday high of $183.88 before paring gains midday. Shares of rival Advanced Micro Devices rose more than 6%, while Broadcom (AVGO) and Micron (MU) stocks rose 1% and 2%, respectively. Most of the world's advanced chips are produced by leading contract chip manufacturer TSMC (TSM) in Taiwan, but the company has been building out its capacity in Arizona with a $165 billion investment, exempting it from Trump's tariffs. The company's US-listed shares jumped more than 4% Thursday. Tech companies have rushed to announce investments in their US manufacturing footprint in the hopes of avoiding Trump's trade war wrath. So far, Nvidia has committed to producing $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US. Micron made a similar $200 billion commitment. Texas Instruments (TXN) has said it's spending $60 billion to bolster its manufacturing capacity in the US. Citi (C) analyst Christopher Danley said the exemptions mean the semiconductor tariff will have 'minimal impact…as US-based semiconductor companies with in-house fabs have operations in the US and fabless companies can commit to using TSMC, Samsung ( GFS (GFS) which have operations in the US.' 'Fabs' refer to factories where chips are produced, and 'fabless' companies outsource production of their chips to contract manufacturers such as TSMC, Samsung, and GFS. Companies with 'in-house fabs' include Intel (INTC), Micron, and Texas Instruments. Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm (QCOM) are 'fabless.' Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Joseph Moore echoed Danley's sentiment, writing in a note to clients Thursday, 'To some degree this outcome would be something of a relief.' 'Yes, 100% tariffs are unpalatable but if companies are given time to restore them, the real tax is just the higher cost of building chips in the United States," he wrote. "The biggest fear was that such a tariff would be implemented immediately.' Still, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon noted that there are questions surrounding how the tariffs would be applied, making it hard to determine its impact. He explained that most semiconductors are imported once they're already inside other products, and the US 'does not import a ton of raw chips" — $45 billion in 2024 — and it's unclear whether duties would just apply to raw semiconductors or also to products containing them. The US Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to Yahoo Finance's request for comment. Further details about the tariffs will be revealed when the agency publishes its findings from an investigation into US semiconductor imports it launched in April under Section 232 of The Trade Expansion Act, which empowers the president to restrict imports of products related to national security. "Trump's public statements often lack detail and nuance, so at this point we do not know exactly how the new rules will be implemented once they go into effect," Rasgon wrote. "We should know more once the actual 232 investigation results are published." Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @ Email her at Sign in to access your portfolio
Buzz Feed
13 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
The Internet Is Losing It Over How "South Park" Portrayed JD Vance
South Park has gone all IN on the Trump administration this season. The paintings. The PSA. And that lil ding-a-ling. This entire season appears to be dedicated to making Trump and his cronies look like dang fools. The second episode of the season was on last night, and it mainly dealt with ICE and the > the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. Kristi Noem's face kept falling off, and she kept on shooting puppies. There was an ICE raid on heaven. There was a Charlie Kirk masterdebater storyline. Annnnd we had our debut of JD Vance. That's him: It looks like they modeled JD after Tattoo from Fantasy Island. As this person said, "They made JD Vance Trumps lil bitch." In one scene, JD even offers to apply baby oil to Satan's butthole. Accurate! I can't wait for who they deal with next!
The Hill
13 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump's planned 100% computer chip tariff sparks confusion among businesses and trading partners
President Donald Trump's plans for 100% tariffs on computer chips that aren't made in the U.S. are stoking confusion among businesses and trading partners — boosting stocks for leading semiconductor companies while leaving smaller producers scrambling to understand the implications. The U.S. imports a relatively small number of chips because most of the foreign-made chips in a device — from an iPhone to a car — were already assembled into a product, or part of a product, before it landed in the country. 'The real question everybody in the industry is asking is whether there will be a component tariff, where the chips in a device would require some sort of separate tariff calculation,' said Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Trump said Wednesday that companies that 'made a commitment to build' in the U.S. would be spared the import tax, even if they are not yet producing those chips in American factories. 'We'll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,' Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. 'But if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge.' Wall Street investors interpreted that as good news not just for U.S. companies like AMD, Intel and Nvidia, but also for the biggest Asian chipmakers like Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company that have been working to build U.S. factories. But it left greater uncertainty for smaller chipmakers in Europe and Asia that have little exposure to the AI boom but still make semiconductors inserted into essential products like cars or washing machines. These producers 'probably aren't large enough to get on the map for an exemption and quite probably wouldn't have the kind of excess capital and margins to be able to add investment at a large scale into the United States,' Chorzempa said. The announcement came more than three months after Trump temporarily exempted most electronics from his administration's most onerous tariffs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to higher inflation. Chorzempa said chip tariffs could again raise prices by hundreds of dollars per vehicle if the semiconductors inside a car are not exempt. 'There's a chip that allows you to open and close the window,' Chorzempa said. 'There's a chip that is running the entertainment system. There is a chip that's kind of running all the electronics. There are chips, especially in EVs, that are doing power management, all that kind of stuff.' Much of the investment into building U.S. chip factories began with the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, providing more than $50 billion to support new computer chip plants, fund research and train workers for the industry. Trump has vocally opposed those financial incentives and taken a different approach, betting that the threat of dramatically higher chip costs would force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up prices for electronics.
