As the Sumner Turns

From today's Tom Taylor column. Read between the lines here and it sounds like the end could be near for Sumner...

Sumner Redstone has sold $300 million in CBS and Viacom stock this year. The real flurry of activity came in the last two weeks, says the Wall Street Journal, which quotes people close to him saying he’s “clearing up his estate to take advantage of tax benefits.” That's the standard answer in these cases, but there might be more to it. Sumner’s the executive chairman of both Viacom and CBS (the company he carved out of Viacom in 2006). The Journal values his holdings in the companies at around $6 billion, and last year he took salary and bonus of $10.2 million from Viacom and $11.75 million from CBS. The survivor of a famous hotel fire in Boston just turned 91 years of age. Sumner’s voice has sounded particularly strained on the last couple of quarterly calls. There's more along those lines - the Journal says that at last Thursday’s CBS annual meeting, “a curtain was pulled back to reveal Mr. Redstone already seated alongside other executives on the stage.” Sumner famously said back in 2010 that “I will never, never sell Viacom or CBS.” Selling off about $300 million of a $6 billion holding could well just be estate planning. But folks around the two companies have to be thinking about a post-Sumner world. CBS and Viacom are controlled by the Redstones through their National Amusements Inc. Sumner has 80% of it and daughter Shari (a corporate lawyer) 20%. Years ago, Sumner reached a separate arrangement with Shari’s brother. The Journal ends the story like this – “potential acquirers have long believed that at least Viacom would end up on the block, in part to pay down the family’s tax bill.”