Bloomberg News
Shari Redstone is moving to block CBS Corp.’s efforts to strip her family of voting control.
The Redstones’ family holding company, National Amusements Inc., issued a change to CBS’s bylaws on Wednesday in an attempt to block the board’s ability to dilute its voting power. Amending the bylaws marks a significant escalation in the battle breaking out between Redstone and CBS.
CBS said in a lawsuit this week that it wants to prevent Redstone and National Amusements from overhauling CBS’s board and forcing a merger of CBS and its sister media company Viacom Inc. .
The Redstones and National Amusements responded Wednesday in a legal filing, saying they had no such intentions. They called CBS’s attempts to issue new voting shares to dilute their nearly 80% voting control “egregiously overboard and unjustified.” They also argue that CBS would have other options legally that wouldn’t require diluting the Redstones’ voting interest, including challenging the removal of any director. “This is an unprecedented usurpation of a controlling stockholder’s voting power,” National Amusements’ lawyers wrote.
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