Sony rules out renewing Paramount offer, says it wouldn’t fit strategy

Sony’s finance chief on Wednesday said the Japanese technology and media giant will not reconsider a fresh bid for film and TV production group Paramount Global.

Sony currently has no plans to submit a revised offer for Paramount, said Hiroki Totoki, the company’s chief financial officer.

In a response to a question during Sony’s fiscal first-quarter earnings presentation, Totoki said that an acquisition of Paramount “does not fit well with our strategy.”

“If we have to acquire the whole of Paramount, it would be quite risky because it may not be well fitted to our capital allocation structure,” he added.

Totoki’s comments confirm reports on Tuesday from Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei, that Sony had decided not to make a new bid for Paramount Global after independent film studio Skydance Media struck a deal to acquire the media giant.

Paramount Global, one of Hollywood’s oldest studios and home to mega media franchises such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Godfather,” ended months of negotiations when it agreed to merge with Skydance.

In a two-step deal, Skydance and partners including RedBird Capital Partners and KKR agreed to invest more than $8 billion into Paramount and acquire National Amusements, which has an enterprise value of $2.4 billion, including $1.7 billion in equity.

Sony and private equity giant Apollo Global Management previously expressed an interest in buying Paramount for about $26 billion, with CNBC first reporting the talks in May.

At the time, Paramount was still considering a bid from U.S. film producer David Ellison’s Skydance Media, backed by private equity firms RedBird Capital Partner and KKR.

Later that month, CNBC’s David Faber reported Sony was rethinking its bid for Paramount. That came as the company also reported a 7% drop in its fiscal 2023 profit amid weakness in its financial services division.

Paramount’s deal with Skydance saw an end to the historic control of the powerful Redstone family over Paramount.

The Redstones have been the controlling shareholders of Paramount since media magnate Sumner Redstone first bought the company in 1994. Sumner’s daughter, Shari Redstone, has subsequently run the company since her father’s death in 2020.