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Sony Makes $26 Billion All-Cash Offer for Paramount

Draugoth

Gold Member
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Sony 6758 -0.31%decrease; red down pointing triangle Pictures and private-equity giant Apollo Global Management APO 3.86%increase; green up pointing triangle have submitted an all-cash $26 billion offer for Paramount Global PARA 9.34%increase; green up pointing triangle, marking the second time the private-equity firm has come in with a bid for the entertainment giant.​
 
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ManaByte

Gold Member
Maybe then Paramount movies will finally be on Movies Anywhere.

Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate are the only studios not using it because there's a six-figure fee for setup and they won't pay. Sony participates already,
 

Ecotic

Member
Huge acquisitions like this can be very perilous and can just about kill a company if it goes wrong.

Does Sony even have $26 billion cash on hand? I imagine they don't and it'll be debt-financed or they'll raise cash by selling stock, hence the danger. I'd advise against it, it's way too risky for a company of Sony's modest size.
 

Jinzo Prime

Member
Huge acquisitions like this can be very perilous and can just about kill a company if it goes wrong.

Does Sony even have $26 billion cash on hand? I imagine they don't and it'll be debt-financed or they'll raise cash by selling stock, hence the danger. I'd advise against it, it's way too risky for a company of Sony's modest size.
Apollo is a private equity firm that is providing some of the capital for this deal. So Sony does not need 26 billion on hand to make this happen.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
If I had an idea what they WANTED these IPs and catalogue for I'd be better able to decide if I should be excited or not. Of course I thought Disney bought Marvel and Lucasarts to gain more attention from boys and we've seen how that went.

Nice to keep Star Trek away from Disney (not that I think they are likely to buy paramount anytime soon). I'm surprised Apple isn't doing this, they certainly have the $$$ for it and IMHO they have the least cachet in this space, buying Paramount could fix that.

But ultimately I dislike movie creators being owned by corporate entities like this, it stifles creativity and I think it limits risk taking on smaller projects and we end up getting big swings using IPs that have been focus grouped to death. We really shouldn't have just a few sources of media creation, production, and distribution all under the same roof.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Well hopefully they can turn Ster Trek around, most of the new stuff is pure bunkum.

They just need to fire Kurtzman and replace him with Terry Matalas.

Kurtzman was never a Star Trek fan (Orci was the fan of the duo when they wrote the JJ Abrams movies).

Matalas started his career as a PA on Voyager and Enterprise. He watched the stage doors close on the final day of Enterprise.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Shame they didn't buy them in 2008, they would have owned the MCU
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Given that Sony Pictures is small fish, I assume they want to protect themselves from buyout and maybe tap into that paramount subscription service.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
Given that Sony Pictures is small fish, I assume they want to protect themselves from buyout and maybe tap into that paramount subscription service.
Sony is part of the Big 5.
Soon to be Big 4.

Disney, Universal and Warner Bros make up the rest.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Not sure I see the same investment opportunity Sony sees here.
This has gotta be some sort of financial scam where Sony buys all of Paramounts massive debt and then someone buys Sony and in all the confusion that debt gets erased (passed to taxpayers I'm sure), a buncha suits get rich(er), and folks working at these studios get fucked. Disney's 66B or whatever buyout of Fox was ludicrous enough, 26B for paramount is even worse. Especially as streaming becomes a massive loss for the folks that now gotta pay royalties, having all that shit up and available at all times is crushing them. We are quickly heading right back to limited availability and commercials, syndication deals, etc
 

blastprocessor

The Amiga Brotherhood
Very interesting buy because Sony could offer their catalogue on the existing Paramount platform and create an enhanced offering for existing Paramount subscribers.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Very interesting buy because Sony could offer their catalogue on the existing Paramount platform and create an enhanced offering for existing Paramount subscribers.
I don't think Paramount has the money to pay for it, honestly. Subscription based streaming services don't really MAKE money like that, any content is cannabalizing the fixed subscriber fee amount, especially since these services are not adding new subscribers anymore and many current subscribers have subsidized plans or even "free" plans that were offered as an incentive for some other service. So paying Sony a billion a year or whatever it would take to offer their library for streaming is very different than a pay-per-view model with revenue sharing.
 

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
Who are the bozos running SNY nowadays? Is this a plot to increase the market cap and sell Sony? I don’t get it.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Who are the bozos running SNY nowadays? Is this a plot to increase the market cap and sell Sony? I don’t get it.
What they’re offering includes all of Paramounts debt, and then they can merge everything, slashing unneeded positions that already exist in Sony and sell buildings making it a highly profitable business.
 
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