Things to Keep an Eye On
The Skydance-Paramount deal, Axel Springer, Microsoft and OpenAI, big hacks in Indian and AT&T, Christian Angermayer leaves London
The Skydance-Paramount deal
This is pretty important, possibly a sign Larry Ellison is going straight:
Under the terms of the deal, the new Paramount will have an enterprise value of $28 billion. Skydance is being valued at $4.75 billion, with its equity holders receiving 317 million newly issued Class B shares valued at $15 per share. Paramount’s Class A shareholders will receive $23 per share.
Skydance’s consortium of investors will own 100% of new Paramount’s Class A shares and 69% of outstanding Class B shares, or about 70% of the pro forma shares outstanding. Paramount’s non-National Amusements Class B shareholders will receive a 48% premium to the price of the stock as of July 1, while Class A shares will receive a 28% premium.
The deal, which is backed by RedBird Capital Partners and the Ellison family, includes $2.4 billion for NAI, $4.5 billion for non-NAI shareholders in Paramount and an additional $1.5 billion in new capital to help pay down debt and recapitalize the company’s balance sheet.
Additionally, a 45-day go-shop provision will allow the Paramount board of directors’ independent special committee to solicit and evaluate alternative acquisition proposals. In the event of a superior proposal being selected within that time span, Paramount would pay Skydance a $400 million breakup fee.
Axel Springer considering a break-up
This is good, it doesn’t really work for so much of American media to be German-owned, especially a property like Politico:
German media giant Axel Springer, which owns Germany's popular Bild tabloid and U.S. news site Politico, is considering a split of the company together with private equity KKR (KKR.N), opens new tab, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
A potential deal would separate its media assets from its digital classifieds operation, handing the former to CEO Mathias Doepfner and the founder's widow Friede Springer, and the latter to KKR and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the sources said.
Tech giants turn their backs on OpenAI
This looks like Sam Altman losing a lot of cover:
Microsoft has given up its observer seat on OpenAI’s board. Apple, which was reportedly expected to take a similar observer position, will no longer pursue one, according to the Financial Times. But whatever clarity this week’s changes were intended to provide, many of the same concerns persist.
Regulators aren’t turning away, and for those focused on ethics in artificial intelligence, the same fears — about profits taking precedence over safety — remain. Amba Kak, co-executive director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute, described the announcement as “subterfuge” designed to obscure the relationships between large tech companies and emerging players in AI.
Japanese Navy’s chief of staff quits
He was embroiled in several scandals:
"I will resign from the chief of maritime staff job on July 19 and retire," said Admiral Ryo Sakai, the most senior uniformed officer in the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF).
"As chief of the maritime staff, I am responsible for the training of personnel and the organizational management of the force, and I'm rightly held accountable for failing to fulfil my duties as the manager of specified secrets," Sakai told reporters.
Chief government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi also said that "disciplinary action" had also been taken against more than 200 people.
46,000 Israeli businesses forced to close since October 7
Benjamin Netanyahu has led his country off a cliff:
Forty-six thousand Israeli businesses have been forced to shut as a result of the ongoing war and its devastating effect on the economy, Hebrew newspaper Maariv reported on 10 July, referring to Israel as a “country in collapse.”
“This is a very high number that encompasses many sectors. About 77 percent of the businesses that have been closed since the beginning of the war, which make up about 35,000 businesses, are small businesses with up to five employees, and are the most vulnerable in the economy,” Yoel Amir, CEO of Israeli information services and credit risk management firm, CofaceBdi, told Maariv.
Major cutbacks at CNN
The axe came down thanks to Mark Thompson, one of the Tory media execs increasingly dominant in the American scene:
Mark Thompson, the CNN chief executive appointed last year to modernize the news network, unveiled a set of sweeping changes to the iconic outlet Wednesday, announcing plans to build a billion-dollar digital business, experiment with artificial intelligence and overhaul key newsroom structures.
The far-reaching measures, which Thompson described to staffers in a memo as a “key milestone in the transformation of CNN,” will result in about 100 employees, or about three percent of the workforce, being laid off. Those employees, Thompson said, will be eligible for severance packages.
Apple letting Indians know to worry about spyware
Apple issuing spyware warnings in India and dozens of other countries this week:
Apple has once again issued a new round of warnings for iPhone users in 98 countries including India, warning them that they might potentially be targeted by a Pegasus like spyware. Earlier this year in April, the Cupertino-based tech giant sent a similar notification to users across 92 nations.
According to a support document on the Apple website, the company has been regularly informing iPhone users across 150 countries worldwide about these types of attacks. However, the latest notification did not disclose the attacker’s identities and the list of countries where users received the alert.
“Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID -xxx-. This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously,” Apple wrote in the new alert.
What this does is put the issue on the mind of every iPhone user, and there has already been a high court case in India over Pegasus. The BJP government was a Pegasus client, and while the high court didn’t give an attribution, Amnesty International found it was Pegasus spyware on a few infected phones. BJP representatives were in DC this week as part of the National Conservatism conference, which is led by an Israeli nationalist intellectual, the country responsible for this promiscuous spyware which has led to high-level scandals in dozens of countries.
AT&T Hack
This is a big one, AT&T was a target of Paul Singer’s activist investing, and it was revealed nearly all customer records were hit in 2022:
Snowflake has spent the past seven weeks dealing with the fallout of a major cyberattack that compromised sensitive customer data at several of its clients. The software company’s problems just got a whole lot worse.
Telecommunications giant AT&T said in a regulatory filing on Friday that hackers tapped into a cloud platform housing customer data, gaining access to records of subscribers’ calls and text messages during a six-month period in 2022. The data includes phone numbers, aggregate call duration and some cell site details, AT&T said in the filing.
An AT&T spokesperson told CNBC that the cloud service was owned by Snowflake. Shares of Snowflake fell 1.8% on Friday, while the Nasdaq rose 0.6%.
Christian Angermayer leaving London
This shady Thiel-connected businessman is probably in a bit of danger under the new Labour government:
He’ll have to work on the doping games somewhere else, I suppose.