Investors backing Edgar Bronfman’s bid for Paramount Global include producer Steven Paul and John Paul Dejoria, who months ago had been working on their own offer, as well as child actor Brock Pierce and Nurali Aliyev, a Kazakh businessman and grandson of the former president of Kazakhstan.
UK investment firm BC Partners and Fortress Investment Group are other names in the mix, Deadline has learned. Pierce, who starred in The Mighty Ducks, is a big cryptocurrency player and founder of Tether whose legal woes have made headlines recently amid a barrage of lawsuits involving a former crypto lender and a failed hotel project in Puerto Rico.
Bronfman stepped in last night with an offer worth $4.3 billion, looking to disrupt a merger agreement between Skydance and Paramount announced July 7 that was set to be sealed at 11:59 pm ET on Aug.
21 if no “superior” proposal arrived before then. Bronfman’s letter to Charles Phillips, head of Paramount’s special board committee evaluating offers, asks to extend a so-called ‘go-shop period,” Deadline hears, which the committee can do for 15 days if a rival offer looks viable.
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