On Thursday, the Close the 8.4 billion US dollar fusion of Paramount Global And Skydance Media initiated a new era for the legendary entertainment company and a new Hollywood mogul: David EllisonCEO of Paramount, a Skydance Corporation.
Ellison, a film producer and the founder of Skysance, quickly becomes a well -known name in intensive reporting on the media about the largest offer in entertainment and media this year. His father and partner in the deal, oracle Co -founder Larry Ellison has long been famous as one of the richest men in the world. However, the other behind the deal is less known: Cardinal Gerry of the private equity company Redbird Capital.
With Redbirds 2 -billion dollar participation to Skydance’s 8 billion US dollar acquisition From Paramount Global, Cardinale was an important player in the 19 months of machinations before the transfer of Sharia Redstone to Ellison.
Before completing the deal, Paramount already showed signs of fiscal savings measures in a private equity style. Under Redstone, the company pushed through redundancies And separated from several high-quality managers and Ellison, promised to find further cost savings of $ 2 billion.
Paramount too cut The late show with Stephen Colbert and added a lawsuit of 16 million US dollars that President Donald Trump received about A 60 minutes Interview. After Skydance had agreed to “ensure that the programming of the new company embodies a variety of points of view from the political and ideological spectrum”, and “eradicate the bias approved the deal on July 24th. The moves received criticism from those who saw the Trump settlement as an indirect bribery and the cancellation of Colbert, a frequent critic of Trump, as efforts to with the president of curry favor curry.
With the conclusion, the influence of cardinale is clearly delimited: Redbird holds 22.5% of Paramount voting rights, while David Ellison will hold 50% of the voting rights and his father will hold the remaining 27.5%. Several alumes of the company are in the C-Suite: Lead the company In addition to Ellison, there are two Cardinale Leutnants – Jeff Shell as President and Andy Gordon as COO. Cardinale did not respond to inquiries about comments on this story.
An “IP Monentarization engine” comes to Hollywood
The rise from Cardinale to Hollywood Kingmaker marks a moment for the entertainment industry. Private -equity companies have made movements In Hollywood for some time, but Redbird’s participation in the Paramount deal is by far the largest.
In contrast to the moguls, creative and dynasties that traditionally ruled the studios, Cardinale is an outsider – a product of Wall Street, not the backlot culture of Paramount. But it is a property that he sees as capital. “I really think that it is a big competitive advantage to be outside of this ecosystem – or at least one foot in one foot in the told Assets‘S Paolo consumption In 2024: “I am not caught in the headlines. I am not involved in emotionalism. I don’t run to go to the Oscars.”
Cardinal-a former rhodes scholar and the type of finance that uses terms such as “technological disintering”-is that real discipline is required to position the legendary but beaten studio for the survival of tech-forward in a ruthless streaming era.
Redbird -in made the same unforgettable strategic discipline impressive. “We are an IP monearization engine,” said Cardinale Assets last year. “We do that.” At Paramount, it will probably mean that the legendary Hollywood studios, foundations, shows, shows and other IPs of the Hollywood studio are used while reducing the costs and improving efficiency. “We should be able to make films for half of the costs” told puck. “We should be able to create original content for half of the costs.”
While Paramount Cardinals is the highest investment, this is by no means the public debut of the Dealmaker. The 58-year-old investor set big Almost three decadesAfter cutting his teeth at Goldman Sachs in 2014 before founding Redbird (a piece on his last name). Although Cardinale has built up a multibillion dollar-private empire, Cardinale said beforehand Assets He rejects the term “Mogul” and simply describes himself as an investor.
The financial world was not always in Cardinale, he, he, he told Bloomberg“The deal in 2024:” I was not one of these chart children who knew that I wanted to go to Wall Street from the first day, “he said. Cardinale grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and visited Harvard University, where he rowed heavyweight crew and made Magna Cum Laude before he was on a Rhodes schedule and Political theory studied.
In 2001 Cardinale helped persuade the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to start the YES Regional Sports Network, with Goldman handing over a private equity investment of $ 335 million in the project. Cardinale saw the Yankees the opportunity to monetize their own content – games, analysis and original programs – as just selling the round -footed cables. In 2004, the risky JA deal achieved hundreds of millions of the annual cash flow and the quickly pursued cardinal promotion to a partner at Goldman. Eight years later, Goldman and Providence Equity sold a 49% participation in YES to News Corp for an evaluation of over $ 3 billion of US dollars from a starting assessment of around $ 850 million in 2001.
Cardinale’s success with the Yankees helped to prove, which should become a fundamental thesis for his investment strategy empire: While platforms, formats and technologies are shifted, the public tie to convincing IP (a famous sports team, a blockbuster film franchise, a beloved character) remains. This durability enables monetization through endless new business models when the landscape develops.
“I can consider the sports industry and the media and entertainment industry as ecosystems”, cardinale explained Assets In 2024Speaking of the Italian football team AC Milan and its efforts to replace the crumbling centuries-old stadium of the team with a brand new Yankee Stadium-like arena. “And then I’m looking for transfers. I’m looking for areas where improvements, evolution and professionalization are required.”
Cardinale left Goldman in 2013 and founded Redbird the following year with $ 665 million, which he had collected for an opening fund. Cardinale’s strategy at Redbird has consistently followed its formula: acquisition of premium spiritual property, rationalizes the costs and then monetize it.
This priority is reflected in the company’s portfolio. With its millions of global fans, Redbird bought a share of 11% at Fenway Sports Group, the Holding Society, the Boston Red Sox, the English football team Liverpool FC, and regional sport Channel New England Sports Network acquired an 11% participation of the English football team. Then Redbird invested in a deal of 725 million US dollars with the help of FSG in the NBA star LeBron James James’s Entertainment Company Springhill.
Outside of sports, Redbird Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s film production company Artists Equity supported and acquired the production company behind the British television show celebrated by criticism Fleebag And the Reality Game Show Ink fishing game: the challenge. In 2024 the company joined the news game, to buy The British publications The Telegraph And The viewer In addition to co-investors from the United Arab Emirates, in a deal written by the former CNN boss Jeff Zucker. Despite the objections of some in the British government on the foreign influence on institutions of British media in May, The Telegraph The acquisition went through in a contract worth over 640 million US dollars.
Cardinale has also supported David Ellison’s vision for Skydance for a long time. In 2020, Redbird became the second largest investor in Ellison’s company and led a capital increase of $ 275 million. Cardinale helped the recording of an additional 400 million US dollars for Skydance in 2022.
For Cardinale, the content is king
Cardinale’s friend Bob Iger, the Disney CEO sees Cardinale as a natural thing when it comes to the business of culture. “He gets the fact that great IP corresponds to the equivalent to beach front,” Iger told Assets last year. “He knows that the world needs entertainment and regardless of the means in which you get it or how it is monetized, there is a real value and it is in the long term.”
So far, this ethos have paid off for cardinal. However, the path before Paramount is full of impressive challenges: a decreasing linear television sector, billions in debts, brutal streaming wars and a workforce that is still due to several layoffs -and probably more with the additional 2 -billion dollars from Ellison. The promise of the new leadership to promise “transformation” is now based on whether they can increase efficiency without relieving the creative core.
For this purpose, Paramount, a SkyDance Corporation, will probably deal with Cardinale’s IP-optimizing strategy. In the Cardinal model, every acquisition of market cycles and fashion symptoms should survive, which means that the operational strict and adaptable “platform value”, which puts the old mentality of the old trophy in the shade.
And Paramount with its more than 100 years of tradition, over 1,200 film titles and sales rights for thousands of other films is full of platform value.
