Word: marvel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mention more locally--on Wall Street. Marvel stock has leaped to $20 a share, from $1 in 2000. The films it produces with studio partners have grossed $3.6 billion. Licensing deals for its 5,000 characters, including Spider-Man and the X-Men, are worth $5 billion in retail sales. Next year could be even better, with Sony's release of Ghost Rider and Spider...
...Marvel's future remains a cliff-hanger. "It's definitely one of the more--if not the most--difficult companies out there to forecast," says Bear Stearns analyst Glen Reid. In late May, just as Marvel kicked off what may be the greatest test of its powers yet--a slate of 10 independently financed films--the firm stunned investors and Hollywood alike by announcing that Avi Arad, the man behind the Spider-Man and X-Men film franchises, would leave to start his own production company. Not six weeks later, two more key execs departed unexpectedly--Tim Rothwell and Bruno...
That tumult has some analysts thinking Marvel is prepping itself for sale. "These are guys who'd be squeezed out by a merger," says Jefferies & Co. analyst Robert Routh, who owns Marvel stock. "A major move would make sense by the year...
What a potential buyer would get is a Marvel unrecognizable from the cartoonish operation it was eight years ago. First, owner Ron Perelman pillaged Marvel for cash and floated $250 million in high-yield debt. The weakened company couldn't make the payments and went bankrupt in 1996. Perelman had also sold off much of the company's most valuable intellectual property...
...Perlmutter, who had bought control of the distressed outfit the previous year, hired as CEO Peter Cuneo, who had turned around such companies as Remington, Clairol and Black & Decker. Under the duo's guidance, Marvel slowly transformed itself into a conservative but lucrative licensing business. "I always tell people that when you come out of bankruptcy, it's like chemotherapy. You may be cured of cancer, but you're still very weak," says Cuneo, now a Marvel vice chairman. "But then along came Spider...