The younger agents at London-based tenpercentery Curtis Brown have completed their deal to buy out the firm from the existing shareholders, including several older agents on the verge of retirement.
The 100-year-old agency, best known for brokering the $340 million sale of the Winnie the Pooh copyright to Disney a year ago, will now be owned jointly by film and TV agents Nick Marston and Ben Hall, literary agents Peter Robinson and Jonny Geller, and Jonathan Lloyd, who will act as group managing director.
Clients include scripter Hossein Amini, writer-director Conor McPherson and several great literary estates, including the works of A.A. Milne and Winston Churchill.
Among the older agents who are handing over the reins are veteran theater rep Peter Murphy and Mike Shaw, who handles novelists David Lodge and the recently deceased Malcolm Bradbury.
The U.K. office of Curtis Brown is a separate company from the U.S. agency of the same name, which is unaffected by the deal. The two divorced in 1992.
The takeover comes at a time of considerable corporate upheaval in London's agency scene. Peters Fraser & Dunlop sold itself late last year to management and merchandizing firm CSS Stellar. And Duncan Heath is near to closing a management buyout of ICM (U.K.).
Former ICM agent Michael Foster and ex-William Morris/Curtis Brown agent Sue Latimer launched their new company, Artists Rights Group, last summer. It's two years since Charles Finch, Luc Roeg and Vanessa Pereira ankled the William Morris Agency to start Artists Independent Network, a management and production company.
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