‘Apex’ Predator Feeds on Media Business Press With Apparent BusinessWire Press-Release Hoax About Rival Paramount Bid

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Before they get to the part that explains, that on your current trajectory, you're heading into a volatile, low-paid, zero-respect career full of poorly trained leaders lacking in skill, courage, vision, grace, guile and talent, journalism school teaches us not to believe everything we read in press releases.

Sadly, a number of big name business pubs went down the ol’ rabbit hole Wednesday morning, after PR service BusinessWire published — then retracted — a press release about a supposed rival bid for Paramount Global.  

”In the after-market hours on July 12, 2024, Apex Capital Trust, a conglomerate of financial institutions and financial services providers, submitted a competing offer to purchase Paramount Global shares ('Paramount'). The economic terms of the competing offer submitted by Apex include an all-cash offer with a total commitment of up to $43 Billion,“ the release stated. 

Apex said its bid was to “facilitate the ‘go-shop’ provision” in David Ellison and Skydance Media's $8 billion winning bid for Paramount, accepted by the conglomerate earlier this month.

There were “issues,” news judgment-wise, with this press release, starting with the fact that Apex's URL — https://apexcapitalmegatrust.com/ — takes you to a page registered eight days ago by free consumer-grade website service GoDaddy.

Apex said it also recently took a 40% stake in “Simmtronics,” which it described as the third largest maker of mobile devices globally behind Samsung and Apple. (It's like Huawei never even existed.)

All of this reminded us a little of disgraced New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass’s website for his made-up “Jukt Micronics,” chronicled in Lionsgate’s excellent 2004 film biopic Shattered Glass.

The Financial Times, in a post headlined, “The latest takeover bid for Paramount is a little unusual,” seemed to approach this strange rectangular monolith appearing out of nowhere with the right tonal stridency and skepticism. The post elegantly details all the weirdness in this press release.

Everyone else? Forgetaboutit …

Bloomberg, Reuters, the New York Post and the Penske Showbiz trades were among the pubs that took the bait, only to retract their stories in the mid-afternoon after BusinessWire took down the press release and issued a "kill" order.

So far, neither BusinessWire or Steven Weiss, the very real and respected Rubenstein Public Relations executive listed on the release, have commented.