While the heated merger rumors between William Morris and Endeavor cooled slightly during the week, news broke Wednesday about the formation of a venture that would put Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel at the center of an enterprise to advise companies on raising coin for media ventures.
The boutique company involves Endeavor partnering with Joe Ravitch, who's leaving after 16 years at Goldman Sachs, and former UBS Warburg vet Jeff Sine. The story broke on Deadline Hollywood Daily.
The potential troika had been rumored for weeks, but Endeavor would not confirm those talks to the media outlets that chased the rumor.
DHD added to the mix IMG's Ted Forstmann, whose name has made the rumor rounds lately as being involved with Ravitch and becoming a third party financial participant in the Endeavor/WMA talks, something that both agencies have denied strenuously.
The emergence of the new venture should not be construed as a sign one way or another on the fate of WMA/Endeavor, because Emanuel has been in discussions with the bankers for weeks, while separately meeting with WMA's leaders.
While Endeavor remains mum on what this venture would do if it actually hatches, observers note that it might not be dissimilar to what CAA has quietly been doing over the past year with Bob Stanley, former head of media and sports structured finance group for Merrill Lynch, who ran point on raising $1 billion in Summit Entertainment financing, $250 million for Marvel Entertainment, and $500 million for United Artists.
He has been working with CAA for a year in providing investment advisory services, under an entity called Evolution Media Capital.
Some felt that there could be a trend in the works, where brokerage house stars leave companies that are in cautious mode and instead form a direct relationship with talent agencies.
Despite the mixed records of hedge funds, there is a feeling that strategic equity capital is sitting on the sidelines, and the bankers and agencies can work together to find ways to put it into showbiz ventures.
With an absence of guilds breathing down the necks of agencies -- there has been no recent movement to enact a new SAG franchise agreement to replace the one that expired in 2001 -- agencies are freer to flex entrepreneurial muscles and benefit in ways that include consulting fees, or perhaps in facilitating the building of asset-based companies that go public and create a windfall.
The trick, say observers, is to make sure that these ambitions don't appear to place the interests of the agency above those of clients.
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