Word: banking
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...Monday's Chapter 11 filing by Lehman Brothers and the bailout of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America have only added to a yearlong credit crunch that is changing the way film financing deals are structured in Hollywood. Not unlike homebuyers facing tougher standards to get a mortgage, the people who greenlight movies are facing more stringent demands from their financiers. "All of the studios, if they want to get a deal done in this environment, will need to better align their interests with investors," says P. John Burke, a film finance lawyer at the firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer...
...That's because in the last 12 months, as the economy began to buckle under the housing crisis, some banks dropped out of Hollywood, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort. Those sticking around are asking for more for their money. Now investors are demanding that studios lower their distribution fees, market their films with more discipline and, most importantly, stop cherry-picking the best films from their slates. In the earliest deals, studios withheld their biggest potential hits from the funds - Sony kept all earnings from its Spider-Man sequels, for example, while investors picked...
...firms' debt onto taxpayers, nearly doubling the amount Uncle Sam owes to his lenders. While we're trying to get our heads around what amounts to the biggest debt transfer since money was created, Lehman Brothers goes broke, and Merrill Lynch feels compelled to shack up with Bank of America to avoid a similar fate. Then, having sworn off bailouts by letting Lehman fail and wiping out its shareholders, the Treasury and the Fed reverse course for an $85 billion rescue of creditors and policyholders of American International Group (AIG), a $1 trillion insurance company. Other once impregnable institutions...
...crisis of confidence among their customers and business partners. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city's financial regulator, stated that the financial resources of AIA currently met its requirements - an attempt to assure the public that there was no reason for panic. But after the failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, and the bailout of home-mortage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hundreds of Singaporeans were taking no chances. Standing in the crowd outside AIA's offices, Karen Foo, 29, said she was only dimly aware of the underlying assets in the investment...
...trust worth roughly $7,000, said if he managed to get inside the insurer's besieged offices - which could take him many more hours - he planned to close out his investment. "There's nothing like cash in your hands," he said. It seems the expression "like money in the bank" has fallen out of favor with a public that is weighing what they stand to lose as the shakeout of financial-industry titans continues. - by Neel Chowdhury