Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co (萬達集團) yesterday signed a US$3.5 billion deal to buy Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment, the maker of blockbusters Jurassic World and Godzilla, dubbing it China’s biggest-ever cultural takeover.
Legendary’s film productions have grossed more than US$12 billion worldwide at the box office, according to a Wanda statement. The company’s projects — which have also included Pacific Rim and the latest Batman trilogy — are mostly the big-budget action spectaculars popular with Chinese audiences.
The agreement was “China’s largest cross-border cultural acquisition to date,” said the Chinese firm, which is headed by the country’s richest man, Wang Jianlin (王健林).
Photo: AP
“American movie companies have the commanding heights of the movie industry in the world,” Wang told reporters at the signing ceremony in Beijing, adding the acquisition will “change this situation.”
The takeover has echoes of Japanese electronics group Sony Corp’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures in 1989, which epitomized the then-booming Asian country’s purchases of trophy US assets.
However, Wang denied that the deal — which comes weeks after Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) bought Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper — was intended to increase Beijing’s cultural influence.
“Government soft power belongs to another sphere,” he said at the briefing, where he and Legendary chairman and CEO Thomas Tull watched lawyers sign the agreement. “I mainly focus on business interests.”
Wanda, founded by Wang, has its origins in commercial property, but is diversifying into areas ranging from entertainment to e-commerce as the world’s second-largest economy matures and growth slows.
The Legendary deal is the latest in a string of overseas acquisitions by the firm, including the organizer of Ironman extreme endurance contests and Swiss sports marketing group Infront. It also has a stake in Spanish soccer club Atletico Madrid.
Wang burst into the international spotlight in 2012 by buying US cinema chain AMC Entertainment for US$2.6 billion. His company owns more than 200 malls, shopping complexes and luxury hotels across China.
The conglomerate said this week that its revenue surged nearly 20 percent last year despite worsening economic conditions in its home market.
Even so Wang called it a “miracle” that a Chinese firm could “acquire such a big and heavy American company” as Legendary.
The deal will make Wanda’s movie unit “the highest revenue-generating film company in the world,” he said.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
Taipei is today suspending its US$2.5 trillion stock market as Super Typhoon Krathon approaches Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rain. The nation is not conducting securities, currency or fixed-income trading, statements from its stock and currency exchanges said. Yesterday, schools and offices were closed in several cities and counties in southern and eastern Taiwan, including in the key industrial port city of Kaohsiung. Taiwan, which started canceling flights, ship sailings and some train services earlier this week, has wind and rain advisories in place for much of the island. It regularly experiences typhoons, and in July shut offices and schools as
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
RSS