In its glory years, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was a Hollywood hit factory that churned out golden classics such as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Wizard of Oz. However, the US entertainment empire is to declare itself bankrupt last week under a pre-arranged deal with creditors to shed a crippling debt burden of more than US$4 billion.
After a year of wrangling over the troubled studio’s future, lenders to MGM are set to seize as much as 95 percent of the company, under a financial restructuring to be put before a bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles for approval.
Once in control, creditors intend to install the founders of a far smaller production company, Spyglass Entertainment, to run a slimmed-down version of MGM in the hope of reviving its fortunes. Spyglass bosses Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum are responsible for hits such as The Sixth Sense.
Insolvency amounts to a humiliating comedown for a studio with a back catalogue of 4,000 titles holding 205 Oscars between them. Financial paralysis has seen movie production grind to a halt: MGM’s only significant release this year was Hot Tub Time Machine that bombed at the box office.
Industry watchers say the tentative deal to put the company through a swift bankruptcy could pave the way for filming to restart. That bodes well for James Bond fans: work on a 23rd movie about the spy has been frozen while MGM, which owns the franchise, sorts out its problems.
The Bond series was one of MGM’s most valuable assets. Daniel Craig, star of the Bond films, has made no secret of his impatience to make a follow-up to 2008’s Quantum of Solace; he said recently that he was “champing at the bit” to get going.
MGM has changed hands frequently in recent decades. Its owners have included drinks magnate Edgar Bronfman, casino billionaire Kirk Kerkorian and CNN’s founder Ted Turner. Critics say it has been milked as a cash cow and starved of long-term strategic thinking.
The studio has been laden with debt since a 2005 buyout by a consortium including Sony, Comcast and private equity firms Providence and TPG, and was due to make a US$450 million repayment on Friday.
Its lenders include major banks such as JP Morgan Chase and Credit Suisse, plus corporate raider, Carl Icahn, who specializes in making money out of distressed companies and who has been agitating, unsuccessfully, for a merger with MGM’s rival, Lionsgate.
Shiina Ito has had fewer Chinese customers at her Tokyo jewelry shop since Beijing issued a travel warning in the wake of a diplomatic spat, but she said she was not concerned. A souring of Tokyo-Beijing relations this month, following remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi about Taiwan, has fueled concerns about the impact on the ritzy boutiques, noodle joints and hotels where holidaymakers spend their cash. However, businesses in Tokyo largely shrugged off any anxiety. “Since there are fewer Chinese customers, it’s become a bit easier for Japanese shoppers to visit, so our sales haven’t really dropped,” Ito
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) Chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) and the company’s former chairman, Mark Liu (劉德音), both received the Robert N. Noyce Award -- the semiconductor industry’s highest honor -- in San Jose, California, on Thursday (local time). Speaking at the award event, Liu, who retired last year, expressed gratitude to his wife, his dissertation advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, his supervisors at AT&T Bell Laboratories -- where he worked on optical fiber communication systems before joining TSMC, TSMC partners, and industry colleagues. Liu said that working alongside TSMC
RSS