Finance Matters

Archive for February 2nd, 2010

WASHINGTON – Former NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman’s new studio, Electus, and the distribution arm of Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group said Tuesday that they are teaming up to distribute Electus’ content.

The companies formed a distribution entity, Electus Distribution, that will be responsible for selling Electus content around the world.

Silverman and Chris Grant, president of Shine International, a unit of Shine Group, will run Electus Distribution. Elisabeth Murdoch, who heads Shine Group, is the daughter of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Electus was formed in July with Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, and will let advertisers have a say in the development process for TV shows and Web videos.

The companies said that Electus and Shine International will also consider co-funding projects and third-party production deals.

Electus Distribution’s first distribution partnership is with Israel-based Abbot Reif Hameiri Production Company. Electus Distribution will develop that company’s programming in the U.S. and Abbot Reif Hameiri will be allowed to sell Electus’ content in Israel.

IAC shares rose 4 cents to $20.33 in afternoon trading.

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See Also:

• Yahoo Will Get New Original Content From Ben Silverman’s Group
• CollegeHumor Is Working With Will Arnett, Jason Bateman On ‘DumbDumb’ Content
• Rupert Murdoch’s Daughter Says Facebook, Twitter, iPhone Are TV’s Last Hope

The American Lawyer continues to roll out its “AM LAW 100″ numbers, and the news was not good at White & Case.

Am Law: Total gross revenue for the firm was $1.3 billion compared with $1.46 billion in 2008. Profits per equity partner (PPP) were largely flat at $1.595 million.  The firm is so far the largest U.S. practice to report its numbers for 2009.

As Richard Lloyd noted in his report, White & Case made huge reductions in March, laying off 200 attorneys and 200 staff members.

The firm became the public face of the firm financial crisis, in a way, when it was profiled in a New York Times piece titled, “A Study in Why Major Law Firms Are Shrinking.”

That article discussed firm chair Hugh Verrier’s decision to make the cuts, and provided the best snapshot we’ve seen over what it felt like to be a big firm lawyer in those uncertain days of early 2009.

NYT: The reaction was swift and frantic. Partners who were staying scurried to protect their favorite workers; résumés were burnished and beamed out to recruiters.

As the victims were informed at private meetings with supervisors, a group of young lawyers downed tequila at a nearby tavern and morbidly scratched a “whack list” on a legal pad with guesses as to who was getting the ax.

This report partially explains the exodus of numerous partners from White & Case over the past weeks. White & Case was established in 1901, and clearly the firm is going through one of the roughest points in its history. Good or bad, indications seem to be that 2010 will be a history-maker for the firm.

Overall, law firms reporting financials so far have been less harrowing than would be expected. Revenues are down, but attorney, staff and general cost reductions seem to have kept profits per partner fairly steady. 

 

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See Also:

• Firm Layoffs In January ‘10 88% Fewer Than In January ‘09
• Paul Weiss Touts Its "Most Profitable Year" Ever
• Quinn Emanuel Avoids Firings Amid Revenue Drop

Is Apple working on a second tablet computer that is more Mac-like — and less iPhone-like?

That’s the rumor, according to TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. He reported yesterday that Apple might be “hard at work” on a bigger, second tablet device that may be more like a Mac — citing a “good” but “second-hand” source.

This could, in theory, quench the needs of some people who have claimed that the Apple iPad, unveiled last week, isn’t powerful enough for them, either in terms of features, horsepower, or user control over the machine or app installation.

So is it going to happen?

“I’m going to go way out on a limb here and tell you that this is total bullshit,” well-sourced Apple blogger John Gruber writes today.

We think it makes sense that Apple would eventually integrate some touch features and multi-touch gestures into more of its products, potentially including its MacBook and iMac lines. Heck, even its latest mouse has multi-touch features. We also assume that Apple has probably tested something like this internally — no doubt it tests a lot of things that it never releases to the public.

But we have a hard time seeing Apple unveiling a second tablet platform in the near future.

Why not? Just making a tablet with Mac OS X running on it would probably be a crappy user experience — something Apple would like to avoid. That would be too much like the Windows-powered PC tablets of years past, which have not been successful.

Touch computing requires a specific user interface optimized for touch input, and Mac OS X is optimized for mouse and keyboard input. The iPad OS, meanwhile, is optimized for touch input, and we assume Apple is pretty happy with it.

Specifically, Mac OS X apps would be awkward to run using touch-based controls, and apps tailored for the “Mac-like” tablet would be lame on Macs and iPads. So it doesn’t really follow.

And adding a second tablet platform so quickly would be very confusing to both consumers and developers. It would send the message that Apple isn’t fully committed to the iPad as its main tablet platform, which would be a weak message.

It makes much more sense that Apple would eventually add more complexity to the iPad platform — such as background processing for third-party apps, a more sophisticated app launcher, bigger or smaller screen sizes, more file capabilities, etc. — than introduce another new touch platform.

See Also: 10 Ways The Apple Tablet Will Change Your Life Forever

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See Also:

• Check It Out! Google’s iPad Looks Just As Cool As Apple’s iPad
• Steve Jobs’s iPad Keynote In Just Three Minutes
• iPad For Verizon Is Happening, Verizon Source Says

Cut the outrage.

Washington Post:

American International Group plans Wednesday to pay another round of employee bonuses worth about $100 million, said several people familiar with the matter, a year after similar payments at the bailed-out insurance giant infuriated many Americans and inflamed Washington.

This week’s payments will go only to employees at the company’s Financial Products division who agreed recently to accept between 10 and 20 percent less money than AIG had initially promised them years ago. In return, they are receiving their payments more than a month ahead of schedule.

Read the whole story >

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See Also:

• AIG SCANDAL: Is The Fed Chump Or Crony?
• New AIG Documents Reveal Goldman Was Far More Involved In AIG Collapse Than You Suspected
• CHART OF THE DAY: How The AIG Bailout REALLY Worked

NBC will lose its decade-long stronghold on rights to the Olympics if Fox and ESPN get their way.

News Corp.’s Fox and Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN will bid for the rights to air the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, according to Bloomberg.

CBS and Time Warner are also contemplating getting in on the action together.

While NBC will be in the mix, it will be “fiscally prudent” with its bids, said NBCU chief executive Jeff Zucker to Bloomberg.

NBC said it will lose $250 million on this year’s Olympic Games in Vancouver due to a lack of advertising growth.  

But ad sales are expected to bounce back, and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will be likely money-makers for the network with the winning bid.

If ESPN wins the bid, it will be a first for the sports network and a first for cable television.

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See Also:

• NBC Wants 200 Million Viewers For Olympic-Sized Payback
• NBC Vastly Overpaid For Olympics, Will Lose Hundreds Of Millions
• How NBC Got Snookered Into Paying Way Too Much For The Olympics