Private equity major Apollo Global Management has made an $11bn offer to acquire Paramount Global’s Hollywood studio, Paramount Pictures, according to a report by Reuters citing an unnamed person with knowledge of the matter.
Apollo’s offer comes as as an independent committee of the company’s board of directors is reviewing a bid from Skydance Media for all of Paramount Global, which also owns CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the Paramount+ streaming service, through the acquisition of holding company National Amusements.
According to a separate report in the Financial Times, the Skydance Media bid is more appealing to Shari Redstone, the media conglomerate’s controlling shareholder through her stake in National Amusements, although in the past she has been reluctant to part with Paramount Pictures, which her late father Sumner Redstone acquired in 1994.
Apollo’s bid is worth more than the entire market capitalisation of Paramount Global, which is currently around $7.7 billion having tumbled by about $17bn since 2019, although shares closed up nearly 12% on Wednesday when news of Apollo’s bid first broke.
Paramount Pictures’s past successes includes classics The Godfather and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as well as more recent franchise hits Mission Impossible, Star Trek, and Transformers.
