Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Bell Atlantic-TCI merger came about after the two sides failed to agree on a purchase price. Last week Liberty Media, which is controlled by TCI chairman John Malone, said it wants to form an alliance with Blockbuster Entertainment in a deal that could threaten the already shaky Viacom-Paramount-Blockbuster merger. Another contender, Time Warner, announced that an expected spring start-up of its experimental interactive television networks in Orlando, Florida, will now come in late fall...
...partners. "There's plenty of adrenaline pumping here," Smith says. "We are a company on the prowl." So is TCI. No sooner had the merger collapsed than rumors began flying of a joint expedition by Malone and Barry Diller, who had only just lost his five-month fight for Paramount Communications, to find themselves a Hollywood studio...
According to some key participants, the Blockbuster deal nearly died aborning -- a close call that could have scuttled Viacom's chances of winning Paramount as well. The trouble began shortly before Christmas, when Blockbuster president Steven Berrard demanded that Viacom provide a separate collar to protect Blockbuster shareholders, who were to receive $8.4 billion in cash and Viacom stock in exchange for their company. While Greenhill later championed a collar for Paramount shareholders, he rejected Berrard's demand out of hand. Reason: Viacom stock was falling fast, and if the plunge accelerated, the company would have to issue more shares...
Viacom couldn't afford to let Blockbuster get away, because Redstone needed the video chain's financial clout to defeat Diller and then help pay interest on the debt after the Paramount merger. So Greenhill, whose firm earned $12.5 million for advising Viacom, resorted to a game of high-stakes financial chicken. He allowed the Blockbuster talks to break off rather than accede to Berrard's demands. At the same time, Greenhill instructed Levitt to maintain contact with his pal Berrard. The strategy paid off on Christmas Day, when Levitt, calling from New Jersey on his Jeep Cherokee car phone...
...battle for Paramount ended rather anticlimactically on Monday, when shareholders finally voted more than the required 50.1% of their shares to Viacom for about $80 a share. The new company's properties now include, among others, MTV, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and a debt of $10 billion...