.Piracy Panel Regal Entertainment in talks for VCL Company aims to create Pan-European network...substantial stake in German entrepreneur Datty Ruth's VCL Film and Medien and its subsid, VCL Communications. Based in New York, Regal...
Adi Cohen's Regal Entertainment Corp. is in negotiations to take a substantial stake in German entrepreneur Datty Ruth's VCL Film and Medien and its subsid, VCL Communications. Based in New York, Regal aims to create a Pan-European film production and distribution network. It is owned by CA Capital Markets, a Cayman Islands-based venture capital fund, New York banker Joseph Grinkorn, two Israeli institutional investors and Spanish producer Jordi Rediu. Regal already has a 75% stake in Rediu's Barcelona-based production company Zip Films. At the height of the Internet bubble in 1999, VCL was floated on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, rolling off its stock market value to strike a film-financing deal with Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. It also bought a share in the "Terminator" franchise. When the Neuer Market crashed and Deutsche Bank withdrew its VCL financing facility, VCL was forced to downscale radically, returning to its core business of German theatrical and DVD distribution. VCL Film and Medien notified the Frankfurt Stock Exchange of the talks on Thursday. A Regal equity capital injection would boost VCL's theatrical distribution -- its last theatrical release was Jackie Chan's "The Forbidden Kingdom" in April -- pump up its specialist interests in DVD distribution and allow VCL to enter film production with Zip Films. Earlier this week, Regal announced it's also in negotiations with an unidentified 150-screen Spanish cinema loop. (Ed Meza in Berlin contributed to this article) |