SHARI REDSTONE
Taking control of Paramount Global after her father Sumner Redstone's decline, engineering the 2019 Viacom-CBS re-merger, and ultimately selling the combined company to Skydance Media in 2024.
Shari Redstone spent decades in her father's shadow before ousting a sitting CEO in a shareholder battle most observers expected her to lose. She reunited Viacom and CBS into a single company in 2019 — a deal her father had blocked for years — and rebranded it Paramount Global. The company struggled to compete in streaming against Netflix and Disney+, and in 2024 she sold controlling interest to Skydance Media in a deal that valued Paramount at around $28 billion. She proved she could win a boardroom fight. The bigger question — whether legacy media brands can survive the streaming era intact — remains unanswered for her successors to figure out.
Net Worth
$3B
Nationality
American
Time Horizon
Generational
Risk Appetite
5 / 10
Net Worth Context
- · Still a billionaire — just the quiet kind at the end of the table.
CAREER & BACKGROUND
Redstone trained as a lawyer and worked in private practice before joining the family business. She co-founded Palace Entertainment, a regional theme park company, in 1998 — her first significant independent venture.
She became Vice Chair of Viacom in 2005 and joined the CBS board. But for years she operated in her father Sumner's considerable shadow.
That changed in 2016 when Sumner's health sharply declined and a governance battle erupted. Shari maneuvered to remove Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman in a bruising shareholder dispute, a move observers had doubted she could pull off.
In 2019, she orchestrated the merger of Viacom and CBS into ViacomCBS — reversing the split her father had insisted on in 2006 — and installed Bob Bakish as CEO. In 2022, ViacomCBS rebranded as Paramount Global.
In 2024, she negotiated the sale of a controlling stake to Skydance Media, handing the Redstone family a substantial payout and stepping back from active control. Her 8-year run as the real power behind Paramount was turbulent, contested, and ultimately profitable.
COMPANIES & ROLES
National Amusements, Inc. — President (controls supervoting stakes in Paramount).
Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS) — Non-Executive Chair, 2016-2024. Viacom — Vice Chair and then Chair, 2005-2019.
CBS Corporation — Chair, 2016-2019. Palace Entertainment — co-founder, 1998.
INVESTING STYLE & PHILOSOPHY
Redstone is a controlling shareholder. Her family's investment vehicle, National Amusements, holds supervoting Class A shares in Paramount that give the Redstone family effective control with a fraction of the economic interest.
She bets on legacy media brands and their underlying asset value rather than growth metrics.
THE PLAYBOOK
Risk Approach
Moderate. She fights hard for board control and is willing to endure years of public criticism and shareholder complaints to hold a position.
But she is pragmatic about exits — the Skydance deal showed she would sell at the right price rather than cling to control indefinitely.
Money Habits
Redstone's wealth is almost entirely tied to National Amusements and its Paramount stake. The family lived modestly compared to peers in their wealth bracket.
The 2024 Skydance deal represented the first major liquidity event for the Redstone family in years, delivering significant cash alongside continued equity in the merged company.
BIGGEST WIN
The 2016 ouster of Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman. Almost every observer expected Redstone to lose the proxy fight.
She didn't. Winning that battle gave her real operational control of a $10 billion media company and set up everything that followed.
BIGGEST MISTAKE
Being too slow to build a credible streaming strategy. Paramount+ launched years after Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ had locked up subscribers.
The streaming wars punished late entrants, and Paramount+ never achieved the scale needed to compete. That is the core reason the company ended up in Skydance's hands.
FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Control through structure, not through capital. The supervoting share model National Amusements uses lets the Redstone family steer Paramount regardless of market pressure or activist shareholders.
Legacy brands, she has argued repeatedly, hold more intrinsic value than streaming growth metrics suggest.
FAMILY & PERSONAL LIFE
Divorced from ex-husband Jon Korff. Has one son, Brandon Korff, who became involved in Paramount's governance.
Father: Sumner Redstone (1923-2020), the media mogul who built Viacom into a global company. Mother: Phyllis Raphael.
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University. Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law.
BOOKS & RESOURCES
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QUOTES (5)
There has never been a more exciting time to be in the business of storytelling. The audience has never been larger, or more global.
I have always believed in the power of great content. And I believe that the brands we have at Paramount — CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Showtime — are among the most powerful in the world.
This combination creates a strong, well-positioned media company with the assets, resources, and scale to be a global competitor.
My father built something extraordinary. My job is to make sure it continues to flourish, to adapt to a changing world, and to stand for the same values he stood for.
We are not simply a content company or a technology company. We are both. And the convergence of the two is where the opportunity lies.
NETFIGO SCORE
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Related Profiles
Investors
Barry Diller
Both are among the most powerful figures in American media who built or inherited legacy entertainment empires. Diller spent years as an independent operator challenging the studio system; Redstone defended the Viacom-CBS empire from inside the controlling family structure.
Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch and the Redstone family ran the two most powerful US media dynasties controlled by supervoting share structures. Murdoch's Fox News and Redstone's CBS competed directly in broadcast; both families used the same share class mechanism to hold control against outside shareholders.
Head-to-Head
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