Black Wealth Watch: Paramount Buys Tyler Perry’s BET+ Stake, Michael B. Jordan’s Agency Goes Independent, Keith Lee Backs Brooklyn Dumpling Shop – Essence

Welcome to Black Wealth Watch, where we round up the biggest stories in Black business and economic news each week — the wins, the setbacks, the deals getting done, and the conversations we should be having about money, power, and who actually gets a seat at the table.

Whew… pull up a chair folks because this week has been a doozy. We saw a Black-owned spirits brand that’s consistently been in the news get tired of playing nice, a Hollywood actor who took back full ownership of his vision (after winning an Oscar!!!), a food influencer putting his own money behind a brand he believes in, MacKenzie Scott doing what she does and writing enormous checks for HBCUs when they need it most, and Tyler Perry watching his equity stake in BET+ change hands. Needless to say, it has been a full week.

Paramount Just Acquired Tyler Perry’s Stake in BET+

BET+ is officially getting folded into Paramount+, and with that comes a notable shift for Tyler Perry. Perry held an estimated 25% minority stake in the streaming platform, and Paramount has now acquired it. Come June, BET+ shuts down as its own service and everything on it, including Perry’s shows Ruthless, Divorced Sistas and All the Queen’s Men, moves over to Paramount+ and its BET Hub. Perry’s production deal with BET Media Group is valued in the nine figures and runs through 2028, so he is not going anywhere creatively. Paramount says he stays on as a partner, but either way, a Black media space just got a little smaller.

Uncle Nearest Is Done Playing Defense

The Uncle Nearest situation got a lot more complicated (and a lot more interesting) this week. Founders Fawn and Keith Weaver filed a lawsuit in New York against Farm Credit Mid-America, the brand’s main lender, accusing the institution of deliberately spreading false information about the company to anyone who would listen. According to the suit, Farm Credit circulated accusations of missing inventory, financial misconduct and insolvency even as the bank held its own paperwork that contradicted those claims. The Weavers also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the same day, which allows the company to restructure without shutting down. Uncle Nearest says the distillery stays open and whiskey keeps shipping through all of it. Fawn Weaver, who is currently a guest Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, has been direct about where she stands, and has been making it known that she did not build this brand to hand it over quietly (and we’ve seen the IG posts that prove it).

Michael B. Jordan’s Obsidianworks Buys Back Its Independence

In 2021, Michael B. Jordan’s Black-owned marketing agency Obsidianworks took a $20 million investment from 160over90 to help scale the business. That partnership just ended, on good terms, with Obsidianworks buying back its stake and returning to full independence. Co-founder Chad Easterling says it was always the plan and that 160over90 helped build the infrastructure and now the agency is ready to move faster without the constraints that come with a larger parent company. Obsidianworks is going after the generation driving what some are calling the Great Wealth Transfer, the projected $124 trillion shift in assets from Boomers to younger consumers. The agency’s entire premise is connecting brands to diverse, culturally driven audiences, and from what we’ve seen, that audience is where the money is moving.

Keith Lee Is Betting on Brooklyn Dumpling Shop

Raise your hand if you’ve ever visited a restaurant (or stood in a long line) because of a recommendation from Keith Lee. Or is it just me? Well, the TikTok influencer who has made a career out of being the person you actually trust when it comes to food, is now putting money behind that reputation. Lee just became a formal investor in Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, the fast-growing Asian-inspired fusion chain with 22 locations and expansion plans in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami. And unlike the average influencer deal, this one does not have an expiration date (Lee is in as an equity partner for the long haul, in what is his first restaurant industry investment). Considering he built everything he has by just telling the truth about what he ate, owning a piece of the table is not a bad place to end up.

MacKenzie Scott Gives Elizabeth City State $42 Million

During Elizabeth City State University’s Founders Day Convocation on March 13th, Chancellor S. Keith Hargrove Sr. announced the North Carolina HBCU had received a $42 million gift from MacKenzie Scott, nearly triple the $15 million she donated to the school back in 2020. The money will go toward scholarships, academic programming and campus improvements as part of ECSU’s ASCEND 2030 plan. That is a lot of money for any institution, but for a campus of roughly 2,000 students it is genuinely transformational. Scott has now given away more than $26 billion since making her pledge, and she keeps choosing HBCUs at a time when these schools could use every ally they can get.