Word: mgm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...curtain has been rung down on the long-running farce starring would-be film mogul Giancarlo Parretti. Last week a Delaware judge confirmed Parretti's removal from the board of MGM-Pathe studios. A onetime waiter who bought the studio in 1990 for $1.3 billion, Parretti accumulated huge debts during his half-year tenure as CEO, forcing the company into involuntary bankruptcy. The studio's chief lender, the French bank Credit Lyonnais, pumped in $145 million to restore solvency but demanded his ouster. The Delaware judge agreed, condemning Parretti's mismanagement of the firm. The downward slide continued...
...UNDERSTOOD AS A startling series of narrowly missed disasters. When he skippered his yacht in Britain's prestigious Fastnet race in 1979, he was so absorbed in victory that he did not even know a gale was killing 15 yachtsmen in the boats behind him. His costly acquisition of MGM's movie library in 1986, widely considered a bonehead move at the time, now looks like a bargain the Japanese would envy. The Atlanta Braves, which Turner bought in 1976, snuffled along in the gutter for years, then went from last place to first in their division this year...
...running an international company with long-term ambitions and an estimated worth well in excess of $7 billion. The businessman who three times in his life had leveraged almost everything he owned and borrowed heavily -- to buy back his father's billboard company, to start CNN and to purchase MGM -- says he came to believe he did not "have to take desperate gambles anymore...
...Turner's premonition came close to happening: his acquisition of MGM/ UA for $1.4 billion buried him so deeply in debt that he had to be bailed out by a consortium of cable operators (including Time Warner, which owns TIME) that invested $562.5 million in the company in exchange for minority ownership. Turner remained chairman, but he was forced to give cable operators seven seats on the 15-member board and veto power over any decision that would cost the company more than $2 million. It was a major setback for a man who lived by his father's homespun...
...Family Channel has cornered the market in old westerns (Wagon Train, The Virginian), while the Arts & Entertainment Network, originally conceived as a haven for fine-arts programming, now runs oldies , like The Avengers and Mrs. Columbo. Ted Turner's cable operation may attract a lot of attention with MGM movie blockbusters and environmental specials, but its most dependable ratings grabber is that unglamorous, uncolorized war- horse, The Andy Griffith Show...