Word: viacom
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...takeover brawl unfold before your eyes! Marvel at the clash of colossal egos! Gasp at the gyrating stock prices! Not since the 1980s has Wall Street so unabashedly savored a fight as it did the one that broke out last week for filmmaker Paramount Communications. With a bid from Viacom Inc. valued at $7.5 billion already on the table, QVC shopping-network chairman Barry Diller unveiled a staggering $9.5 billion counteroffer. Paramount stockholders could almost be heard sighing at the thought of their potential profits. In a counterassault with personal overtones, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone fired back with an antitrust...
...accumulation of wishful hunches and adrenal instinct that makes people finally just go for it. Since show-business executives are uncommonly sensitive to go-for-it twitches, it would have been weird if a competing bidder had not stepped in to turn the friendly merger of Paramount Communications and Viacom into the high-strung, insanely complicated struggle it became last week...
...VIACOM...
While there is little overlap in the Paramount and Viacom lines of business, there is plenty of redundancy in the executive suite, which could trigger a management shuffle. Davis, who would move from chairman and chief executive of Paramount to CEO of the new company under Redstone, told TIME last week, "Let's face it, I've taken a step down in title, and I do expect others to follow...
...firm would battle rival giants across a vast range of entertainment and information markets at home and abroad. Viacom and AT&T are building an interactive cable-TV system in Castro Valley, California, that has similarities to one that Time Warner has under construction in Orlando, Florida. At the same time, MTV competes overseas with Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting and Ted Turner's CNN. But industry watchers say such clashes of the titans don't have to be fatal. Says Christopher Dixon, an industry analyst for Paine, Webber: "There's room on the planet for all these guys...