Word: krim
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Seymour Krim...
...Krim cited a history of friction between the freewheeling movie firm and the textbook-style conglomerate. "This is one business that is really different," he said. Krim and Benjamin, both New York lawyers, acquired the business in 1951 from Charles Chaplin and Mary Pickford, who helped start the firm as a place that would allow independent film makers to work without the restrictions imposed by major studios. Run from a dingy Manhattan headquarters, U.A. has no production facilities, but operates in effect as a banker and distributor for movie people seeking an honest count at the box office and exceptional...
...Krim says, U.A. suffered all sorts of indignities, including the imposition by Transamerica of a computerized profit-forecasting system that Krim considered "a joke" in the instinctive movie business. But most galling of all were the consequences of the fact that under Transamerica's umbrella, U.A. had become an "invisible company," with no stock exchange listing of its own. Although shares of other moviemakers such as Columbia and 20th Century-Fox have been shooting up on the strength of box-office hits, Transamerica's stock has hung listlessly in the $13-$16 range. The U.A. executives...
Beckett could share Krim's concern about flat share values. Despite its unimpressive performance on the stock exchanges, Transamerica also had an impressive 1977: its revenues increased from $2.7 billion in 1976 to more than $3 billion, while profits rocketed upward by 46%, to $169 million. (United Artists contributed about 15% of both Transamerica's revenues and its earnings...
...movies planned for release in 1978, including Hair, Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Rings and Woody Allen's first film since Annie Hall. Beckett insists that U.A. will continue to prosper, pointing out that it still has "one of the best distribution systems in the world." Krim and Benjamin, who resigned from Transamerica's board last week and will not sell their Transamerica stock, may see an advantage there. "They are now in a position to go into the production end of the business," notes Beckett. That prospect is by no means definite, and the U.A. refugees...