Word: matsushita
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Ovitz orchestrated the merger with cool precision. To avoid the bickering that marred the Columbia deal, he handpicked the law firm, investment bankers and public-relations agents to represent Matsushita. He then served as a shuttle diplomat between the two companies, anticipating problems before they could grow. When the merger was clinched, Ovitz joined the army of 100 dealmakers at Matsushita's law firm in Manhattan for a 9:15 a.m. champagne toast. For Ovitz's work on the merger, Matsushita could eventually pay CAA as much as $40 million. The sum aroused the green-eyed envy of deal-starved...
What's next for Hollywood's hottest leading man? After the Matsushita deal, Ovitz may be in line to succeed Lew Wasserman as head of MCA. Yet such a move could limit his power, which now encompasses the entire movie business. And he is not yet finished changing the face of Hollywood...
Central Casting could not have supplied a better chorus of worriers than the screenwriters, politicians and just plain citizens who weighed in last week after MCA chairman Wasserman announced that he was selling Universal Pictures and the rest of the MCA entertainment giant to Matsushita Electric Industrial for $6.1 billion. How could he, they asked, sell to foreigners the studio that made To Kill a Mockingbird, Jaws, E.T., Born on the Fourth of July and Back to the Future? The home of TV heroes Magnum, Columbo, Jim Rockford, Sonny Crockett and even the Beaver? The company that runs the lodgings...
Some business strategists were puzzled by the fuss. Overseas investors, after all, already own more than $400 billion worth of U.S. businesses and real estate. And Matsushita doesn't make a very convincing villain. The world's largest consumer electronics firm (fiscal 1990 revenues: $38 billion), it manufactures some of America's favorite brands of video and audio gear: Panasonic, Quasar and Technics...
Some Hollywood insiders as well as political critics are worried that foreign owners might change the fundamental nature of American movies and television shows, subtly shifting their tone and content. Those concerns were heightened last week at the press conference Matsushita president Akio Tanii conducted by satellite video hookup after the deal was announced. In answer to an American reporter's hypothetical question about what Tanii would do if Universal wanted to make a Japan-bashing film or one that criticized the late Emperor Hirohito, Tanii responded ambiguously, "Something like that shouldn't emerge. Filmmakers must create films that...