Shari Redstone paid off a nearly $200 million debt held by her family business that controls Paramount – and she did it with cash mostly fronted by tech tycoon Larry Ellison, The Post has learned.
The 70-year-old daughter of the late media titan Sumner Redstone forked over $186 million last month owed to creditors of National Amusements — the holding company that owns 77.5% of Paramount’s voting stock, sources close to the situation said.
On Tuesday, a source close to the situation confirmed that Redstone got the lion’s share of the cash from the Oracle co-founder, whose son David Ellison is the CEO of Skydance — the Hollywood studio behind the latest “Top Gun” and “Mission Impossible” blockbusters.
Skydance and its partners, which include Redbird Capital Partners, agreed to pay $2.4 billion for the family’s entire NAI stake in a complex $8 billion deal that will lead to a merger with Paramount. David Ellison will helm new company.
Redstone holds a 20% stake in NAI through two trusts in her name and is in line to receive about $350 million from its sale, according to Bloomberg.
She made the full payment on the 2018 loan, which carried a stiff interest rate of 11.5%, even though the balance wasn’t due until May 2025, insiders told The Post.
Representatives for Redstone, Paramount and Skydance declined comment.
Her decision to pay off the loan early came after reports that the media heiress was suffering a cash crunch as Paramount struggles with weakness across its business units, from CBS to cable networks like Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon.
As reported exclusively by The Post, National Amusements in February had sold real estate assets to make a $40 million debt payment to the same group of creditors.
“Shari needed money and couldn’t wait until the deal was consummated,” an industry source following the situation said.
Another source who supports the merger added: “She was in dire straits. It’s fair to say she was desperate to sell the company.”
The revelation that she got the money from Skydance’s controlling owners raised questions about whether Redstone received a sweetheart deal – and turned down bids that would have been better for Paramount’s shareholders.
Redstone struck the deal with Skydance in July after several false starts, which included higher preliminary offers from other suitors and outcry from Paramount investors who feared being short-changed by going with the independent studio.
One of those purported suitors was reportedly Warner Brothers Discovery, but the talks fell apart last winter because it wasn’t offering cash to any shareholders, according to a Nov. 4 public filing by Paramount.
Instead, the media giant agreed to pay an astronomical 1,600 times the valuation of Skydance’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization at the time of the deal, the filing showed.
Skydance’s EBIDTA was only $3 million for the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, according to the filing.
The deal includes the much-smaller Skydance merging with Paramount. It will pay $15 a share for as much as $4.3 billion of the common shares, about half of Paramount’s market cap.
The deal is expected to close early next year.
Paramount stock was trading at around $10 on Tuesday, despite the prospects of the merged business.
Skydance’s Ebitda is projected to soar to $258 million in 2025 with the release of the latest “Mission: Impossible” film and a few other movies in the pipeline.
By contrast, Amazon paid 27.5 times the Ebitda of movie studio MGM when it bought the company in 2021.
“No prominent shareholders were excited about inheriting the Skydance business,” a Paramount analyst requesting anonymity told The Post.
“The Skydance numbers made a bad deal look worse.”
Last week, famed investor Mario Gabelli, Paramount’s second largest stock holder urged the Federal Communications Commission to halt its review of the transfer of broadcast licenses in order to review Skydance’s finances.
On Tuesday, incoming FCC Chair Brendan Carr said Tuesday the agency would investigate how “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris, which could delay the closing.
Paramount was always buying Skydance based largely on its big 2025 projections, sources said, and the studio can still hit those numbers.
The company’s revenue was expected to hit $974 million in 2024 and rise to $2.3 billion next year.
“The real question is whether this business hits its projections from 2025 and beyond,” a source familiar with Paramount’s thinking said.