CBS on Monday asked a court to hinder controlling shareholder Shari Redstone from interfering at a special confluence of its board called to consider a merger with Viacom.
The news of the lawsuit, alphabetized to a Delaware court and also seeking to dilute the 79 percent voting normals in CBS held by Redstone’s National Amusements, pushed the network’s shares up precisely 1 percent and those in Viacom down 6 percent.
National Amusements, a privately ran movie theater company owned by Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari, own a adulthood of the voting shares in both companies.
CBS said in the lawsuit Shari Redstone had enchanted actions over the past two years that have led the special commission of the board considering the merger to conclude that she presents a significant forewarning of irreparable and irreversible harm to the company and its stockholders.
The suit seeks to coerce reject through the issue of a stock dividend that would dilute Nationalistic Amusements’ voting interest from about 79 percent to 17 percent, CBS revealed in a statement.
The dividend would not dilute the economic interests of any CBS stockholder, but resolve help the company to operate as an independent, non-controlled company and fully judge strategic alternatives, the company said.
National Amusements could not right now be reached for comment.