In the next few weeks Hollywood celebrities, agents, dealmakers, assistants and paparazzi are going to learn how to pronounce Anil Dhirubhai Ambani’s name. Amid all the turmoil in the financial markets, Ambani’s company Reliance ADAG has just plunked down $500 million to help Steven Spielberg (the god of Hollywood) take Dreamworks SKG out of the hands of Viacom’s Paramount Pictures and make it a private entity. Seasoned Hollywood insiders are chuckling. “Rich foreigners have lost their shirts in Hollywood with surprisingly regularity.” The Japanese with Matushita’s investment into Universal Pictures. The French with utility Vivendi, SA. Perhaps even the Canadians with Seagrams. And countless German and other European investors who have funded movies as a tax write-off but did not realize that they were writing off their entire investment (at least they got have dinner with a star or starlet).
But Ambani’s is different as I said in my blog entry when this deal was first announced in June. And in August as Bloomberg News and others start the predict that the deal would be signed any day now, I predicted that the time was not quite yet. See this write up and then this one.
Stay tuned for more. And note that Ambani’s investment number reduced form $600 millon to $500 million, even as the reported size of the deal rose from $1 billion to $1.2 billion. While full terms haven’t been disclosed yet (and may never be), I can promise you that Ambani has better terms in the 12 weeks that have elapsed since the discussion came to light.
