(Washington) Media group Paramount Global announced Thursday, during the presentation of its quarterly results, a 15% reduction in its workforce in the United States, in anticipation in particular of the merger with the production company Skydance Media.
This would mean the layoff of 2,000 employees, according to the American press.
“We announced in June that we had identified $500 million in year-over-year savings across the company, which are included in the $2 billion in savings that Skydance has identified. To achieve those savings, we will reduce our U.S. workforce by about 15%,” company executive Chris McCarthy said on a conference call with analysts.
“This will concern duplicates [provoqués par la fusion avec Skydance] in marketing and communications, a reduction also in corporate functions, finance, legal, and other support functions,” he detailed.
The layoffs will begin “in the coming weeks and will be largely completed by the end of the year,” McCarthy added.
Paramount Global and Skydance Media announced their merger in early July, after the group, built on the legendary century-old studio Paramount Pictures and the CBS channel, had been looking for a partner for several months.
The operation will effectively be a takeover of Paramount Global by Skydance, with the shareholders of this company taking de facto control of the new entity.
Debt-free and unlisted, Skydance Media has convinced major shareholder Shari Redstone, daughter of tycoon Sumner Redstone, to sell it the holding company National Amusements, which controls 77% of the voting rights of Paramount Global.
This is a major milestone for Skydance, which is relatively unknown to the general public. The studio, which only creates content for others but does not have its own distribution channels, has produced several installments of the saga Impossible missionas well as Top Gun: Maverick.
Skydance stands out in the film studio landscape. It was created in 2010 by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who positioned it as a very successful young company in terms of new technologies.
The studio quickly formed a partnership with Paramount, with which it has already produced 30 films.
Among the big challenges facing the new entity is getting Paramount+ online video service back on track. The platform had more than 71 million subscribers as of the end of March, but streaming has cost Paramount nearly $3.5 billion in revenue over the past two years.