Paramount Global Media Group announced Thursday, during its quarterly results presentation, its intention to lay off 15 percent of its employees in the United States, in a move that comes in particular as part of anticipation of the merger with the production company Skydance Media.
This decision means that the group will dismiss 2,000 employees, according to estimates by the American press.
Chris McCarthy, one of the group's executives, said during a conference call with analysts, "We announced in June that we had identified savings of $500 million on an annual basis in the company, and these have been included in the $2 billion savings that Skydance has identified. To achieve this, we will reduce our workforce in the United States by approximately 15 percent."
He added, "This will be related to duplicate positions (due to the merger with Skydance) in the areas of marketing and communications, in addition to the elimination of positions in the company and in the finance, legal and other support departments."
McCarthy added that the layoffs will begin “in the coming weeks and will be largely complete by the end of the year.”
Paramount Global and Skydance Media announced their imminent merger in early July, after the group formed from the famous studio Paramount Pictures and CBS had been searching for a partner for months.
The process will be concretely manifested through the acquisition of Paramount Global by Skydance, with the shareholders of the former company taking effective control of the new entity.
A major challenge facing this new entity is correcting the course of the online video service Paramount+. The platform had more than 71 million subscribers at the end of March, but the streaming service has cost Paramount about $ 3.5 billion in losses over the past two years.
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