Redstone Agrees to Partial Sale of Cinemas

NEW YORK, December 4: Sumner Redstone and his daughter, Shari Redstone, have reached an agreement to sell a
portion of National Amusement's 1,500 cinemas, rather than the entire division,
in another effort to ease an existing debt.

According to reports, if
lenders agree, part of the U.S. group and 19 theaters in the U.K. could be sold
as part of a debt-restructuring plan to avoid selling more shares in CBS and
Viacom. National Amusements faces a deadline to repay
some $800 million in debt by mid-December. It has a total of nearly $1.6
billion in debt outstanding.

National
Amusements had already sold some $230 million of shares of CBS and Viacom to
help meet debt payments. Earlier this week Redstone announced the sale of his
87-percent controlling stake in video game company Midway Games for $100,000
and the assumption of $70 million in debt to a private investor.

—By
Kristin Brzoznowski