TOMATOES: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group plans to acquire Flixster, which runs the popular L.A.-based movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster also operates an online social network for movie fans out of its San Francisco headquarters. Flixster’s mobile app is the top-selling movie discovery program for mobile devices, with more than 35 million downloads. “Driving the growth of digital ownership is a central, strategic focus for Warner Bros.,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, said in a statement. “The acquisition of Flixster will allow us to advance that strategy.” Flixster’s major venture capital backers are Lightspeed Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures.
OLVERA: A longtime dispute over lease rates on historic Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles has been settled. The deal, between business owners and city officials, stipulates that rents will rise in steps to market levels in five years. El Pueblo De Los Angeles Historical Monument, a city-controlled entity that owns the street, raised rents in April 2010, but some merchants refused to pay the higher rates.
EXCHANGE: Image Metrics Inc., a facial animation technology company, has moved up from the Pink Sheets to the OTC Bulletin Board. The Santa Monica company, which went public in March 2010 through a reverse merger, said the move will provide greater investor visibility. The Bulletin Board, owned by Nasdaq, requires listed companies to file financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Founded in 2000, Image Metrics uses its technology to animate faces in video games and movies. Past projects include work on video game “Red Dead Redemption” and film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
MUSIC: Billionaire brothers Tom and Alec Gores were among three groups submitting bids to buy Warner Music Group. The siblings, who run separate L.A.-area private equity firms, submitted a joint bid. The trio of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, billionaire Ronald Perelman and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners also submitted an offer. The third bid came from Len Blavatnik, a former Warner Music director who runs financial group Access Industries. Warner Music, based in New York with significant operations in Burbank and Santa Monica, has called a board meeting with the goal of picking a buyer.
ACQUISITION: Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. has sold its L.A.-based online comparison-shopping business Shopzilla to a private equity firm for $165 million. Knoxville, Tenn.-based Scripps said that Palo Alto-based Symphony Technology Group will pay $150 million in cash at the time the deal closes near the end of May, and $15 million in deferred payments. Scripps acquired Shopzilla for $525 million in 2005. Shopzilla operates comparison-shopping sites Shopzilla, Bizrate and Beso, which have more than 40 million combined users in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.
WILSHIRE: Owners of a Koreatown hotel involved in a tax dispute with the city of Los Angeles have filed for Chapter 11 protection. The filing came one week after two sheriff’s deputies were stationed in the hotel lobby to collect $3.5 million the hotel owes in bed taxes. Majestic Towers Inc. owns the Wilshire Hotel at 3515 Wilshire Blvd., a 385-room facility located across the street from the Wilshire-Normandie Metro Red Line subway station.
LAWSUIT: The city of Los Angeles has filed a lawsuit accusing Deutsche Bank of being a slumlord. The suit, the first of its kind in the nation, asks a judge to fine the German bank hundreds of millions of dollars and issue an injunction to force it to clean up foreclosed properties. The suit alleges that Deutsche invested in mortgage-backed securities and as a result found itself owning as many as 2,000 properties that it wasn’t prepared to maintain or manage. The bank has rejected the accusations, saying loan servicers were contractually responsible for maintenance of and evictions from foreclosed properties.
ENTERTANMENT: NBC Universal will receive an additional $300 million from new owner Comcast Corp. to invest in programming. Philadelphia-based Comcast said $200 million will be spent mainly on new NBC shows to fill 10 p.m. time slots, and an additional $100 million will go toward cable channels Bravo, Oxygen, Syfy and E! Entertainment. The fourth ranked network ordered 21 pilots this year, the same number as last year, and will announce to advertisers in New York this month which ones will air on the fall schedule. NBC Universal Chief Executive Steve Burke said in a conference call if the network can improve to third place, that would translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in increased advertising revenue. “The real key to turning around NBC is not necessarily increased investment,” he said. “The real key is making better shows.”
EARNINGS: True Religion Apparel Inc. reported first quarter net income of $9 million compared with $8.4 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 20 percent to $94 million. … International Rectifier Corp. announced net income of $50 million for its fiscal third quarter, compared with $40 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 23 percent to $297 million. … PS Business Parks Inc. reported first quarter net operating income of $44 million, compared with $41 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 10 percent to $74 million. … Edison International reported net income of $214 million, compared with $249 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 3 percent to $2.78 billion. … Mercury General Corp. announced net income of $58 million for the first quarter, compared with $61 million in the first quarter of 2010. Revenue rose slightly to $705 million.
