Gerry & The Jeffs Come for Shari’s Baby

Jeff Shell Gerry Cardinale Jeff Zucker
The multistep Ellison and Cardinale deal, involving Jeff Shell and Jeff Zucker, is the most creative—and the most potentially rewarding for the non-Redstone shareholders of the company. Photo-Illustration: Puck; Photos: Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Kevin Winter/Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto/John Lamparski/WireImage via Getty Images
William D. Cohan
April 17, 2024

Finally, at long last, the stark deal dynamics at Paramount Global can be distilled to their very essence. There are three choices facing the special committee of the company’s board of directors, or at least those directors who remain after the sudden mass resignation last week of Dawn Ostroff, Nicole Seligman, Frederick Terrell, and Rob Klieger. Notably, Klieger and Seligman are lawyers; Ostroff is a savvy media veteran; Terrell is a senior deal guy at Wells Fargo. Suffice it to say, this was not a good look and the latest sign we’ve encroached even farther into unchartered territory when it comes to Paramount. Anyway, there’s the David Ellison-RedBird-KKR deal. Then there’s the Apollo Global opportunistic option, and there’s door number three—an increasingly unattractive and possibly even untenable status quo alternative, a.k.a., do nothing