The Business Journal turns the spotlight on local bankers who lend the money to keep Hollywood rolling.
Jared Underwood, 44
Senior vice president, manager of the entertainment group Comerica Bank, Century City
Residence: Los Angeles
Education: B.A., business, USC
Years in Industry: 17
Notable Films Financed: “Twilight” series, “Crash,” “District 9”
What are your responsibilities? I co-manage our portfolio with an emphasis on developing new relationships and new opportunities. I spend a fair amount of time traveling, going to the major film markets and film festivals. We typically attend Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, the American Film Market, and occasionally another festival or two.
Slates or single films? We’re known as a leader, if not the leader, in the single-picture financing business. That is always going to be an important part of our business. We do do slates. The type of deal we would do if it was a slate is with an established producer or distributor who has raised some money (and presold) the films and then we would lend against those presales.
What is a typical loan size? As the loans get to large numbers, let’s say $40 million-plus, you would typically bring in a partner and syndicate the loan. Right now, we’re working on an $80 million production loan and we’ll bring in a partner for that. Basically, if it’s been presold, then we’ll lend against those presales.
Who are some of your clients? Summit, Weinstein Co., New Image.
What would you never finance? We’re collateral lenders, (so) it’s sort of self-governing: Movies that are hard to presell are movies that we’re not going to be financing. Some of the trickier movies can be sports, dramas, period pieces. If there are unsold rights and it’s a tricky genre, then we wouldn’t be very aggressive.
Do you listen to pitches? When you’re sitting down with the sales agent or the producer, in effect they’re pitching it to you. But the pitches don’t have any influence on whether we’re going to do the deal. Really, the pitch for us is show us the presales. The presales will give you a sense of the commercial prospects of the film.
What attracted you to this business? It was completely accidental. I really had no interest in even getting into banking, but I needed a job and a friend of mine was working at City National Bank. He told me about a training program they had there. A few years after doing that, Jeff (Colvin) called me up and I left to go work at Imperial Bank. One thing led to another and 17 years later I’m still doing it.
Do you interact with many celebrities? Occasionally some of the actors have their own producing aspirations. We have done some deals where we deal directly with actors: We worked with Alec Baldwin on a film. We worked with Andy Garcia.
Ever been on the red carpet? Yeah, we go to premieres. Sometimes it’s a perk, sometimes it’s sort of scary when you notice the film hasn’t come out so well.
