Post by Admin on Jan 5, 2019 20:34:21 GMT
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John Blythe: The real culprits in CL were Georges Vigon and Francois Gille, who were director generals of CL and its Dutch subsidiary CLBN which had the entertainment finance division during that period. Particularly Vigon. He had apparently been bribed many times by Parretti which resulted into Frans Afman loosing his job. Part of the reason CL and CLBN were suffering was because they had financed so many hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies that were loosing money and they feared that the French government would have to intervene and assume all of this debt. That's partially why after Parretti's reign at MGM Studios, CL literally shut down all of these other companies (i.e. - Cannon, and the 'new' Cannon Pictures that Assonitis and Pearce ran; 21st Century, Empire/Epic/Trans World, Hemdale, Gladden, many others) to revalue MGM's net worth so the studio could be sold by 1997. At that time, under U.S. Banking Laws, a foreign bank that foreclosed on an American company had to divest itself within seven years. In this case, CL foreclosed on MGM and ousted Parretti in 1991 and by putting the bulk of the assets from these other indie film companies that CL had lend money to for many years into MGM (since MGM had no existing film library at that time; it had been sold to Turner Entertainment when Ted Turner briefly owned the studio) I assume there thinking it is that it would make MGM more attractable to future buyers. But CL had very illegitimate business practices as well. For example, Vigon and Gille should have never had excepted bribes from Parretti; secondly, the bank got into huge legal battles and took over some of these indie film companies without any notice or negotiation: they kicked Sarlui and Diamant out of Epic and diverted assets from their TWE outfit without notifying them; they later sued and a U.S. Court ruled in their favor and barred CL from foreclosing on TWE; CL also "forced" Hemdale Film Corp. to sell certain film rights to Carolco Pictures; they also revalued film libraries from many of these film companies and accused them of improperly licensing film assets for below market terms, etc.
John Blythe: The real culprits in CL were Georges Vigon and Francois Gille, who were director generals of CL and its Dutch subsidiary CLBN which had the entertainment finance division during that period. Particularly Vigon. He had apparently been bribed many times by Parretti which resulted into Frans Afman loosing his job. Part of the reason CL and CLBN were suffering was because they had financed so many hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies that were loosing money and they feared that the French government would have to intervene and assume all of this debt. That's partially why after Parretti's reign at MGM Studios, CL literally shut down all of these other companies (i.e. - Cannon, and the 'new' Cannon Pictures that Assonitis and Pearce ran; 21st Century, Empire/Epic/Trans World, Hemdale, Gladden, many others) to revalue MGM's net worth so the studio could be sold by 1997. At that time, under U.S. Banking Laws, a foreign bank that foreclosed on an American company had to divest itself within seven years. In this case, CL foreclosed on MGM and ousted Parretti in 1991 and by putting the bulk of the assets from these other indie film companies that CL had lend money to for many years into MGM (since MGM had no existing film library at that time; it had been sold to Turner Entertainment when Ted Turner briefly owned the studio) I assume there thinking it is that it would make MGM more attractable to future buyers. But CL had very illegitimate business practices as well. For example, Vigon and Gille should have never had excepted bribes from Parretti; secondly, the bank got into huge legal battles and took over some of these indie film companies without any notice or negotiation: they kicked Sarlui and Diamant out of Epic and diverted assets from their TWE outfit without notifying them; they later sued and a U.S. Court ruled in their favor and barred CL from foreclosing on TWE; CL also "forced" Hemdale Film Corp. to sell certain film rights to Carolco Pictures; they also revalued film libraries from many of these film companies and accused them of improperly licensing film assets for below market terms, etc.