The Skydance deal that created Paramount Skydance was valued at $8 billion, and it put the combined company’s value at roughly $28 billion. It took a little over a month to go from announcement to closing.
Skydance Media announced a three-way merger in July 2024 with Paramount Global and National Amusements, the controlling shareholder. The Federal Communications Commission approved it on July 24. The deal closed on August 7.
How Paramount got here
The company that agreed to sell started as ViacomCBS. It was formed on December 4, 2019, when the second versions of Viacom and CBS Corporation recombined. The two had been split apart in 2005. On February 16, 2022, ViacomCBS took the name Paramount Global, and it did business simply as Paramount. Its base was One Astor Plaza in Times Square.
The pieces had been tangled together for decades. Paramount Pictures was founded in 1912 as the Famous Players Film Company. CBS followed in 1927, and Paramount held 49% of it from 1929 to 1932. Viacom began as CBS’s syndication arm, renamed in 1970 and spun off in 1971 after new FCC rules barred networks from owning syndication companies. National Amusements bought Viacom in 1987.
Paramount Pictures went to Gulf and Western Industries in 1966. Gulf and Western became Paramount Communications in 1989, and Viacom bought it in 1994. Viacom merged with CBS in 2000, then split from it again on December 31, 2005.
The long road to a recombined Viacom and CBS
National Amusements first pushed the two companies to merge in September 2016. The deal was called off that December. Talks resumed in 2018, and the fight got ugly. CBS sued National Amusements on May 14, 2018, accusing Shari Redstone of abusing her voting power to force a merger that neither company wanted. CBS chief Les Moonves, who had called the Viacom channels an “albatross,” left in September 2018.
The merger was announced on August 13, 2019, with Redstone as chair and Bob Bakish as CEO. CBS Corporation agreed to buy Viacom in a deal worth up to $15.4 billion.
The new company soon began selling assets. It sold CNET Media Group to Red Ventures for $500 million, and the CBS Building to Harbor Group International for $760 million. CBS Studio Center went to Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management for $1.85 billion. A $2.175 billion sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House was blocked by a federal judge, and Paramount later agreed to sell the publisher to KKR for $1.6 billion in cash.
