UA

"In March 1993, I flew to New York to meet François Gille, the multilingual managing director of Crédit Lyonnais, which now reluctantly owned MGM. After a leisurely conversation about the south of France and our mutual love of the region’s cuisine, we turned to the studio. Gille had met with eight leading investment banks. All offered the same advice: to deal with its $3.2 billion in troubled entertainment assets, the bank should break up MGM, lay off its 2,400 employees, and sell what assets were left, mainly the lion logo and sister studio United Artists’s 1,100-title film library. (MGM’s library already belonged to Ted Turner, and Lorimar already owned the famous studio lot.) On paper, that course seemed prudent, as the studio was burning through a million bucks a day. Total liquidation could shave the bank’s losses to $900 million. I said, “I have a different point of view. I think you should put another $150 million into MGM so it can start distributing movies again.” “And why would that be best?” “Because your bank wants to open branches in New York and do more business in America. It would be terrible public relations to fire more than a thousand Americans and plow the MGM name underground for good.” After letting that point sink in, I said, “I believe I can get you most of your money back, if not all of it.” CAA could jump-start the studio with a few movie packages, which would buy the French time to revive UA’s tent-pole franchises: Rocky, the Pink Panther, James Bond. New production would boost the older titles’ value. When Crédit Lyonnais eventually sold MGM, as required by the feds, it would get a much better price. Gille said, “No one else agrees with you.” I stayed impassive, but my heart leaped. In any multiplayer contest, you want to be the outlier. I told Gille, “Everyone you’ve met with is in the business of selling assets. But I’m in the business of building assets, and I think you are, too.” “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said."

"Thrive on Deals 205 to-day operations hold little appeal for him, but buying and selling com¬ panies clearly does, even when incumbent management fights him tooth and nail. “I don’t think he enjoyed being part of MGM or UA,” said Alan Ladd Jr. “What he liked was owning a movie studio that was for sale. And we were always for sale.”36"