Paramount’s Last-Minute Bidder Defends Financing Claims in Court

Project Rise Partners is firing back at claims that it lied in court about a $13.5 billion bid aimed at scuttling Paramount Global’s $8 billion sale to Skydance Media LLC.

The investor consortium waved away an array of allegations about its financing, arguing in a legal filing that Skydance is trying to smear the partnership by raising out-of-context details about an earlier offer it abandoned last year. The deal with Skydance would hand the entertainment conglomerate’s reins from media mogul Shari Redstone to producer David Ellison and backers led by his father, Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison.

A recent public letter from Skydance devoted “an inordinate amount of time casting assorted aspersions on PRP that are either unfounded or red herrings,” attorneys for the investor group wrote Monday.

The filing came in a lawsuit brought by New York City’s public pension funds seeking to invalidate sections of the Skydance deal that prevent Paramount from considering a topping bid. The litigation is the latest in a wave of hurdles confronting the transaction, including overlapping shareholder cases and regulatory scrutiny that Redstone is looking to resolve by settling President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit over a CBS interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

A Delaware Chancery Court judge took the litigation off the fast track at a March 13 emergency hearing after the funds agreed to narrow their information requests. The judge, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, told a lawyer for the group that he had “a good bit of explaining to do.”

‘Too Carefully Worded’

Monday’s court filing repeated the claim that Skydance “mixed up its sheikhs” in raising doubts about Project Rise’s backing by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. “There are two sheikhs with very similar names,” a lawyer for the investor group wrote. “This mistake appears sloppy at best and calculated to mislead at worst.”

Skydance is also mischaracterizing Project Rise’s claims about partners it touted—including Aquarian Holdings LLC, Blackstone Inc., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—in a preliminary September 2024 term sheet the consortium “rushed” to submit based on tentative commitments it would have “fleshed out in due diligence,” according to the filing.

Goldman had indicated it would advise on the transaction if it came together, Blackstone was a “potential investor,” and “Aquarian verbally committed to make a $4 billion investment upon the execution of a deal,” the filing said, but “there simply was no deal.” A denial by Aquarian founder Rudy Sahay “is inaccurate or it is much too carefully worded,” according to Project Rise.

The consortium is represented by Baker & Hostetler LLP and Steptoe LLP. Skydance is represented by Latham & Watkins LLP and Ross Aronstam & Moritz LLP. Redstone is represented by Abrams & Bayliss LLP and Ropes & Gray LLP. The funds are represented by Grant & Eisenhofer PA, Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP, and Friedman Oster & Tejtel PLLC.

Paramount is represented by Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. Its transaction committee is represented by Richards, Layton & Finger PA and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.

The case is N.Y. City Emps. Ret. Sys. v. Byrne, Del. Ch., No. 2025-0126, letter filed 3/17/25.