Private equity firm RedBird Capital, founded by Gerry Cardinale, has been stockpiling executive talent, including two former NBCUniversal heads in Jeff Zucker and Jeff Shell, who begins work at the private equity firm in early 2024.
This executive made the bold call that RedBird won’t just acquire Shari Redstone’s National Amusements but all of Paramount Global, backed by a consortium of outside funding, including money from David Ellison and BDT Capital, the merchant bank run by Byron Trott that backed Redstone earlier this year.
Zucker could then run Paramount Global and do the dirty work of deciding what part of the company he wants to run and what to sell. Still, this executive said Zucker would keep most of the assets and attempt to prove the company was undervalued as a publicly traded entity.