Media giant and south Florida native Jeff Zucker is teaming with Palm Beach resident Gerry Cardinale’s global private equity firm RedBird Capital and International Media Investments to form RedBird IMI, which will focus on investments and acquisitions in media, entertainment and sports content.

Zucker will serve as CEO of RedBird IMI. He will also serve as an Operating Partner of RedBird Capital.

“I’ve spent 35 years running media businesses at the intersection of news, sports and entertainment, creating new brands and resurrecting old ones,” Zucker says. “That experience has given me unparalleled perspective for this unique time in media, and the combination of the RedBird and IMI capital and strategic discipline, combined with my operational experience, will give this joint venture a unique advantage in the current media landscape.”

Zucker’s career in media has been long and lustrous: Starting out as an intern to Bob Costas during the 1988 Summer Olympics, Zucker would go on to spend 25 years at NBC Universal, ultimately serving as its CEO from 2007 to 2011. From there, Zucker moved to CNN, turning around the global news brand as its CEO from 2012 to 2022, as well as serving as President of Turner Sports for the final three years of his tenure.

RedBird, headquartered in Palm Beach, was founded by Cardinale, a Goldman Sachs veteran in 2014 and currently manages over $7.5 billion in assets. According to Cardinale, “With Jeff as our CEO, this platform will integrate substantial operating expertise with sophisticated financial and investing acumen to deploy transformational capital on a scaled basis.”