City profile

Growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Shari Redstone watched her irascible father, Sumner, transform a “small cinema chain into a global media conglomerate” he called Viacom, said the FT. It was a tough upbringing. Redstone, now 70, later wrote that her mother was “verbally and physically and financially abused by him every day of her life”. Shari herself was deemed her father’s favourite child, but their relationship was volatile and equally insult-ridden. He “publicly dangled” the idea she would succeed him, “then said the opposite”. When the old man died in 2020, she finally took over – changing the name of the business to its best-known asset, Paramount, and laying out an ambitious strategy “to take on Netflix” in the streaming wars. It has been a rocky run ever since.

Now this “media heiress” wants out, said The Wall Street Journal. But her bid to sell off her controlling stake, while securing the Redstone legacy, has unleashed “mayhem” within “the storied Hollywood company” behind The Godfather. The CEO has quit in protest, amid shareholder fury. Redstone reportedly favoured a deal with David Ellison’s Skydance over an alternative joint bid tabled by Sony and the US asset management giant Apollo. But the former deal is “dead”, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and the situation is in limbo. Described as “chatty” and “always keen to discuss baking recipes or her favourite TV shows”, Redstone is now pondering her next move, said the FT. The likely sale of Paramount marks “the first big casualty of the streaming wars”.

It may not be the last.