克里斯托弗·帕尔梅里（Christopher Palmeri）是投资公司 RedBird Capital Partners 的创始人，同时也是派拉蒙·斯凯丹斯公司（Paramount Skydance Corp.）收购华纳兄弟探索公司（Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.）这一重大交易的幕后推手之一。他表示，合并后的公司业绩一定会令投资者感到满意。
By Christopher Palmeri Gerry Cardinale, the founder of the investment firm RedBird Capital Partners and one of the architects of Paramount Skydance Corp.’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., said the performance of the combined companies will impress investors.
“你们一定会感到惊讶的，”帕尔梅里在周四于洛杉矶举行的彭博 Screentime 会议上说道，“我相信我们会展现出真正意义上的增长。”他进一步解释说，虽然合并过程中会有一些成本削减措施，也会有人因此被重新安排岗位，但这并非此次合并的真正目的——此次合并的目的是将业内两家最著名的电影制作公司整合到同一个企业体系下。
“I think you’ll be surprised,” Cardinale said Thursday at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles. “I think we’re going to show a trajectory of real meaningful growth.”Cardinale said that while there will be cost-cutting and people that end up in new positions, that is not the reason behind the big merger, which will put two of the industry’s most famous film studios under one corporate umbrella.
“没有哪家公司会每年花费数十亿美元来制作电影，然后还打算通过解雇所有员工来实现业务目标，”帕尔梅里强调，“事实恰恰相反。”这位 58 岁的前高盛集团投资银行家近年来参与了媒体行业多起重大交易。去年，他参与了斯凯丹斯媒体公司（Skydance Media）收购派拉蒙全球公司（Paramount Global）的谈判并提供了资金支持；随后，他还立即支持了斯凯丹斯公司的创始人大卫·埃利森（David Ellison）提出的收购华纳兄弟的方案（该方案的总金额高达 1100 亿美元）。
A company wouldn’t spend billions of dollars a year making movies, “and figure your entire premise of your business plan is to fire everybody in Hollywood,” Cardinale said. “It’s just the opposite.”The 58-year-old former Goldman Sachs Group investment banker has been behind some of the biggest deals in the media industry in recent years. Cardinale negotiated and helped finance Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global last year and immediately began backing Skydance founder David Ellison’s next bid, the $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros.
这场激烈的竞争持续了数月之久。最初，派拉蒙在竞争中败给了网飞公司（Netflix Inc.），但随后在二月份提出了更具竞争力的收购方案。目前，派拉蒙有望在 10 月 6 日完成这笔交易——此前该公司已与 12 位州检察长以及试图通过法律手段阻止合并的编剧工会达成了和解协议。
That bruising battle dragged on for months. Paramount initially lost the fight to Netflix Inc. before coming back with a superior offer in February. Paramount looks to be on track to close the deal on Oct. 6, after negotiating a settlement with 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild trade union, which had tried block the merger in court.
帕尔梅里对有人认为埃利森家族与唐纳德·特朗普总统之间的密切关系是此次合并获得联邦监管机构批准的关键因素这一观点表示不满。他认为，真正的决定因素应该是双方提出的商业计划本身的合理性与可行性。
Cardinale bristled at the idea that the close relationship the Ellison family has with President Donald Trump is what tipped the scale in the mega-merger winning approved by federal regulators.
“这种与特朗普的亲密关系，你知道，被过度夸大了，”卡迪纳莱（Cardinale）说道。“美国企业界的任何人都应该与那届政府保持联系，这并不是因为那是特朗普，对吧？特朗普是支持商业的。他对科技界非常感兴趣。”红鸟资本（RedBird）今年的其他交易包括对时事通讯和播客平台Puck的投资，以及欧洲电视制作公司Banijay Entertainment与ALL3Media的合并，这笔交易是通过其与总部位于阿布扎比的IMI媒体集团合资成立的RedBird IMI进行融资的。
“This coziness with Trump thing is, you know, it’s way overstated,” Cardinale said. “Anybody in corporate America should have a relationship with that administration, and that’s not because it’s Trump, right? Trump is pro-business. He’s very interested in the technology community.”Other RedBird deals this year included an investment in newsletter and podcaster Puck, and the merger of European TV producers Banijay Entertainment and ALL3Media, a deal financed though its RedBird IMI joint venture with Abu Dhabi based-IMI media group.