Gerry Cardinale<\/a> says that the deal wasn\u2019t necessarily the emotional roller coaster it appeared to be.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cTo a certain extent, it was business as usual,\u201d says Cardinale, who retired from Goldman Sachs in 2012 and launched Red\u00adBird two years later. \u201cObviously, this was a very complicated transaction where, in a certain way, we had to almost buy it three times. [But] the one thing that has distinguished us over my 35 years [in the business] is that we\u2019re persistent, we\u2019re tenacious, we don\u2019t get emotional about these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNonetheless, Cardinale agrees that this investment is uniquely significant, both personally and financially. It gives his company RedBird 22.5% voting power in the resulting company, Paramount Sky\u00addance, and Cardinale a seat on its board of directors. It puts him second in line behind Skydance Media founder David Ellison, who took the title of chairman and CEO, and his father, tech mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, who collectively control 77.5% of the voting power.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI looked at a lot of things and passed on them,\u201d says Cardinale. \u201cAnd what changed it for me was that you had someone like David Ellison, who is a true owner-operator.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThis isn\u2019t the first time a New York-based power broker has gotten a hand on the reins of Paramount. In 1966, Austrian-born Charles Bluhdorn\u2019s automotive parts man\u00adufacturing and distribution conglomerate Gulf+Western bought the financially trou\u00adbled studio, eventually leading to a golden age that produced such classics as \u201cThe Godfather\u201d films and \u201cChinatown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tUnlike Bluhdorn, Cardinale isn\u2019t a Hol\u00adlywood newcomer. As he\u2019s quick to point out, this is far from the only significant showbiz investment made by RedBird in recent years. In 2021, it was part of a con\u00adsortium that bought a significant minority stake in LeBron James and Maverick Car\u00adter\u2019s media and entertainment firm Sprin\u00adgHill Company, and the following year it committed a minimum of $100 million to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon\u2019s pro\u00adduction company Artists Equity. It\u2019s also been active in the sports world, with bets that include paying $750 million for an 11% minority stake in Fenway Sports in 2021 and $1.3 billion for the full acquisition of AC Milan in 2022. More importantly, it\u2019s been investing in Skydance since 2019.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cRedbird, to a certain extent, is an intel\u00adlectual property monetization engine,\u201d says Cardinale. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a long track record of being able to buy into IP-based businesses and effectively we underwrite them, reinvigorate them and reposition them for the 21st century for technological disintermediation,\u201d where middlemen are removed from the supply chain, enabling more efficient and profitable direct-to-consumer transactions.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn the investment side, the results are clear: the entity putting in the money gets an ownership stake. But what do these firms get for their advisory services? Typi\u00adcally, advisors collect retainer fees ($10,000 to $50,000 a month) and success fees (1.5% to 10% of deal value), with the larger deals commanding larger retainers, but lower success fee percentages. With a mega-deal like the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery, which has received dueling offers from Net\u00adflix and Paramount topping out at $108.4 billion, the worst-case piece of the deal pie can\u2019t help but be impressive.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd what do the companies get from the advisors?<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe basically do two or three things,\u201d explains Jimenez. \u201cWe put our arm around clients during their most important trans\u00adactions, and that typically is M&A when folks are looking to buy or sell. Also, cap\u00adital raising, which is when they\u2019re raising debt equity or going public. And then we also have a restructuring business, which is good when things go sideways,\u201d he says, pointing to the work Moelis has done with AMC Theatres, which includes advising on a $600 million strategic investment from Silver Lake in 2018 and its 2020 restruc\u00adturing strategy. \u201cIf you ask [AMC chairman and CEO] Adam Aron, he\u2019d tell you that we had a big hand in keeping his company afloat during really tough times during the pandemic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter serving as one of the advisors to Skydance on its Paramount merger, Moe\u00adlis advised Netflix on its deal to buy War\u00adner Bros. Discovery, which was quickly met with a hostile offer from the company it just helped create. The Raine Group also advised Skydance on the merger (along with BofA Securities and, of course, Red\u00adBird), while LionTree and Rothschild & Co. advised Paramount, along with Centerview Partners, which advised the independent special committee of the Paramount board.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut when you untangle these deals, things tend to be a bit less crowded than they might appear to an outsider, accord\u00ading to Jimenez.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn big transactions, \u201cthere\u2019s just so much to do in a short period of time, you often need a lot of help, but that\u2019s not always the case,\u201d he says. \u201cDepending on the transaction, sometimes even on some of the big ones, there\u2019s only one or two banks on each side.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Look at the biggest recent mergers and acquisitions in the worlds of entertainment, media and sports, from the record-setting $55 billion buyout of Elec\u00adtronic Arts to the Skydance-Paramount merger and the dueling offers for Warner Bros. Discovery, and you\u2019ll notice the same handful of names showing up again and again, often together in the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2217955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[428825,428826,428827,428828,428829,428830,428831,428832,344664,344740,428833,428834],"class_list":["post-2217954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-angelo-rufino","tag-bain-capital","tag-carlos-jimenez","tag-dealmakers","tag-dealmakers-2025","tag-gerry-cardinale","tag-liontree-advisors","tag-moelis","tag-paramount-skydance","tag-redbird-capital-partners","tag-silver-lake","tag-the-raine-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/How-Boutique-Firms-Dominated-Hollywoods-Biggest-Deals-in-2025.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2217956,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217954\/revisions\/2217956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2217955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}