Shortly after my Puck partner Matt Belloni reported that David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale were kicking the tires at National Amusements, Inc., the Redstone family holding company that owns nearly 80 percent of the voting rights and a 10 percent economic stake in Paramount Global, I started getting calls from Paramount Global shareholders. As you might imagine, they were worried about what a deal for NAI would mean for them and their Paramount stock. 

One of the calls came from a friend who had just come in from shooting pheasants. He has been a long-suffering Paramount Global shareholder, and I could hear in his voice that his worries would not be alleviated if Ellison, the heir to the Oracle fortune and the founder of Skydance Media, and Cardinale, an ex-Goldman banker and founder of the suddenly ubiquitous RedBird Capital, succeeded in buying NAI. In fact, his suffering would likely be exacerbated by a new management team at Paramount Global, a no-doubt too-clever-by-half structure and, presumably, the end of the takeover premium that has propped up the stock lately. He’s right to be worried. (This is not investment advice.)