Struggling movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc (MGM) is looking for a buyer.
The home of the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises said on Friday it had begun to explore strategic options including “a potential sale of the company.”
In a statement, MGM also said its lenders have agreed to grant the company another respite until Jan. 31 from interest payments on nearly US$4 billion in debt.
The decision, reversing its refusal to sell a year ago, came during a conference call on Friday between restructuring expert Stephen Cooper, now MGM’s vice chairman, and the 140 lenders owed some US$3.7 billion in bonds maturing in mid-2012, according to a person close to the situation.
The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
‘ROCKY’
The lenders agreed to seek outside investors for a new partnership, investment or sale of part or all of the company. Its most valuable asset is its library of 4,000 movie and TV-show titles including Rocky and Dances With Wolves. It also owns subsidiary United Artists, headed by Tom Cruise, whose film Valkyrie grossed a respectable US$200 million worldwide after its release last year.
However, the company has fallen on hard times and the home video market has shrunk.
MGM’s latest release, a remake of the 1980 musical Fame, was panned by critics and quickly vanished from most theaters after its Sept. 25 release, making US$42 million worldwide to date.
Financial adviser Moelis & Co is expected to send out nondisclosure agreements and detailed financial information to interested parties by early next week, the person said.
Potential buyers include Time Warner Inc, the parent of the Warner Bros studio, and News Corp, home of 20th Century Fox.
HALF OF ‘THE HOBBIT’
On Thursday, with rumors swirling of its potential sale, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp vice chairman Michael Burns also said his company was interested in taking a look.
“They have fantastic franchises like James Bond, they have half of The Hobbit. Of course it’s interesting to us,” Burns told CNBC’s Fast Money.
Although MGM had the cash on hand to make the interest payments, pushing back the interest payments allows it to complete three movies it has in the pipeline for next year: Hot Tub Time Machine, Red Dawn and The Zookeeper, the person said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to