Sony wants to hear Zee’s plan to rescue merger ahead of deadline

SONY Group is looking to hear Zee Entertainment Enterprises’s proposals for rescuing the merger plan with its Indian unit that sought to create a US$10 billion media behemoth.

The Tokyo-based entertainment company said on Tuesday (Dec 19) that it “has not yet agreed to a deadline extension” as requested by Zee over the weekend. The weekend filing, Sony said in the statement, was “an acknowledgement” that they will not be able to meet the Dec 21 deadline to close the merger.

“We look forward to hearing Zee’s proposals and how they plan to complete the remaining critical closing conditions,” it said.

A Zee spokesperson did not offer any immediate comments on Sony’s statement.

Negotiations between the two companies appear to have reached an impasse in the past few weeks as differences cropped up on who’ll lead the new merged entity, Bloomberg has reported.

Zee was insisting that its chief executive officer Punit Goenka – also its founder’s son – will helm the new entity, as agreed in the pact signed in 2021, while Sony is wary of his appointment given a regulatory probe against Goenka, Bloomberg wrote last month citing sources familiar with the discussions. This created an eleventh-hour tussle in the two-year-old merger plan that has already seen a fair share of drama and delays. BLOOMBERG