Medial mogul Byron Allen is making another bid to buy Paramount Global after an effort to acquire the conglomerate last year failed to gain traction.
Allen Media Group offered $14.3 billion to purchase Paramount Global, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter. According to a copy of the offer letter reviewed by the outlet, the group’s offer is $28.58 for each voting share of the company’s stock and $21.53 per nonvoting share — amounts that are roughly 50% higher than the 90-day average of both classes of Paramount Global shares.
Including the company’s debt, Allen’s offer to buy the company is around $30 billion according to the Journal and Reuters. Bloomberg first reported Allen Media Group’s latest offer to buy Paramount.
The offer letter viewed by the Journal indicated that Allen Media Group offered to buy Paramount last year, but the company’s board declined to entertain the offer as the board expected the price to go up — although the letter noted, "Since our last offer, the stock price has declined approximately 37%."
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Share prices for Paramount’s Class-B non-voting stock surged by over 6.6% during Wednesday’s trading session and were up more than 2.3% during after hours trading in the wake of the news.
Paramount Class A shares with voting rights rose over 21.5% during Wednesday’s trading but gave back over 3.1% of those gains as the stock fell after hours.
Bloomberg reported that if the deal goes through, Allen would sell the Paramount film studio along with some real estate and intellectual property assets, while retaining the company’s TV channels and the Paramount+ streaming service with the goal of running them more efficiently.
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Paramount owns several TV networks including the CBS broadcast network and cable offerings, such as Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, VH1 and others. Allen Media Group previously offered to buy BET from Paramount with a roughly $3 billion offer last year, although the company decided not to sell the network, according to a previous report by the Journal.
Allen Media Group owns TheGrio and The Weather Channel, among other media outlets.
Paramount has been the subject of other merger and acquisition discussions, with Warner Bros. Discovery discussing a merger late last year.
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Allen Media Group and Paramount Global did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters contributed to this report.
