Paramount Global shares, which had ticked up 1.6% Wednesday amid word of a left-field acquisition offer, sank in after-hours trading as questions were raised about the legitimacy of the purported bid.Deadline wrote about the offer from a company called Apex Capital Trust on Wednesday after it had been covered earlier in the day by Bloomberg, Reuters and other media outlets. The bid ostensibly was delivered to Paramount’s board and controlling shareholder National Amusements on July 12, at the start of the 45-day “go-shop period” provided for in its planned merger with Skydance. It was announced Wednesday morning via a press release on BusinessWire, a reputable forum for official corporate communication. Steven Weiss, an EVP at Rubenstein Public Relations, was listed as the press contact.By late afternoon on the East Coast, the press release had been taken down by BusinessWire, leaving only a “page not found” error message for any visitors landing there. Neither Weiss nor BusinessWire responded to a request for comment from Deadline.Reuters said it had formally withdrawn its story “pending further investigation about the legitimacy of the bid.”Apex was billed as a conglomerate of financial institutions and financial services firms. Skydance and its backers would acquire Paramount controlling shareholder National Amusements Inc. ahead of a full merger with Paramount. Skydance and its backers, including RedBird Capital and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, are putting a total of $8 billion into the deal.Apex said its all-cash offer includes a total commitment of up to $43 billion, including debt assumption and future spending. No explanation was given for the lag time between when the offer was submitted and when it was announced via a press release.A rep from a special committee of Paramount’s board, which was set up to evaluate strategic alternatives and has already blessed the Skydance proposal, declined to comment when contacted by Deadline.“We are confident in the expertise of the investment firm and their willingness to move expeditiously and efficiently to evaluate this offer and submit it to the Special Committee of the Board of Paramount as a proposal that is substantially superior to the Skydance deal,” Tatiana Logan, General Counsel for Apex Trust, was quoted as saying in the press release. “Paramount and its assets are a national treasure, and we intend to treat them accordingly. Paramount’s global future is bright, but it requires resources, which we have and are enthusiastic to deploy, making it a win-win situation for all of Paramount’s stakeholders.”There was no immediate response from Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, Paramount or Skydance. On Tuesday, Deadline reported that Edgar Bronfman Jr. was continuing to consider a bid for NAI as a possible prelude to a stake in Paramount, though Barry Diller has recently abandoned his pursuit.In its offer, Apex said it would pay the $400 million breakup fee that Skydance would incur by not completing its deal. It also would assume Paramount’s debt of $15.8 billion and commit $10 billion in investment in working capital to fund a set of strategic objectives, including “content creation, acquisition, protection and monetization; cutting-edge innovation, technology, and AI, including quantum computing; consumer focus; and global expansion.” It also said the funding would go toward “hiring additional team members,” the opposite of the job reductions that even Skydance’s well-regarded proposal would entail.In the now-vanished press release, Apex Capital described itself as “a multinational holding company and a qualified institutional investor in key finance and fintech sectors.” It said it has stakes in banks and a wide range of financial institutions and technology providers as well as what it called “actively producing gold mines in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.”
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