Distributors

Herbalife Ltd., battling a billionaire investor's bet that its stock will tank, is expected to reassure shareholders at the company's annual meeting Thursday that the Los Angeles nutritional products maker is a strong, healthy, legitimate operation. The meeting at the Beverly Hilton comes amid lingering questions about Herbalife's future. For several months, two activist investors have put the company's core operation at issue. Bill Ackman has bet $1 billion that the company is a pyramid scheme that will fail, and Carl Icahn bought 15% of Herbalife's stock, wagering that its business is legally sound and will withstand Ackman's attack.

Herbalife Ltd., battling a billionaire investor's bet that its stock will tank, is expected to reassure shareholders at the company's annual meeting Thursday that the Los Angeles nutritional products maker is a strong, healthy, legitimate operation. The meeting at the Beverly Hilton comes amid lingering questions about Herbalife's future. For several months, two activist investors have put the company's core operation at issue. Bill Ackman has bet $1 billion that the company is a pyramid scheme that will fail, and Carl Icahn bought 15% of Herbalife's stock, wagering that its business is legally sound and will withstand Ackman's attack.

BOSTON -- Rising programming costs are the biggest headache facing the cable industry, a group of industry analysts said Monday. "That is a very genuine and legitimate concern that imperils the entire ecosystem," said Craig Moffett, vice president and senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein Co. Moffett was speaking on a panel at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in Boston. Moffett said prices for programming have gotten so high that it is getting tougher for smaller distributors to cover their costs, and warned that further consolidation could be a result.

Marketers say they plan to increase spending on online brand advertising in a new report that comes just weeks before the major digital distributors are preparing to woo Madison Avenue in a series of advertising presentations. The new 2013 Online Advertising Performance Report, produced jointly by the CMO Council and the Nielsen Co.'s Vizu, a unit that specializes in measuring online ad effectiveness, found that advertisers are changing how they view the medium. Though they once used online primarily for direct response, marketers who responded to this year's survey said they plan to allocate more of their digital dollars to brand advertising that's used to promote a company, product or service.

Sky Angel LLC, a distribution company that delivers content via broadband or "over the top," claims that programmers are resisting doing business with it for fear of upsetting cable and satellite pay-TV distributors. In written testimony submitted in advance of Wednesday's Future of Video hearing being held by the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Sky Angel Chief Executive Robert Johnson said, "The video distribution marketplace remains willing to engage in anti-competitive tactics in order to harm emerging competitors.

PARK CITY, Utah - A group of star-driven dramas and comedies, plus a half-dozen documentaries, have caught the fancy of buyers at the Sundance Film Festival, with distributors ponying up nearly $25 million in the last few days for movies they hope will return their investment in spades. Fox Searchlight paid close to $10 million for a Steve Carell movie, and Sony shelled out almost $4 million on a Jane Austen-themed comedy. Relativity Media spent $4 million for a Joseph Gordon-Levitt porn comedy and the Weinstein Co. put up about $2 million for a well-received drama, "Fruitvale.

The future of Herbalife is riding on Latinos. The Los Angeles company estimates that Latinos account for about 60% of its U.S. sales made through its network of independent distributors. And a growing slice of those sales are coming from informal nutrition clubs run out of people's homes and strip mall shops. It's a cultural phenomenon that got its start in Mexico and is quickly catching on among immigrants who have moved to Southern California. Budding entrepreneurs like Angel Perez, a 27-year-old from Inglewood, are forming the backbone to Herbalife's growth.

Triad Medical Inc. aims to raise $37 million in an initial stock offering that would fund the acquisition of 11 private distributors of medical products, according to a filing with regulators. Triad, formed last spring to create a nationwide distribution company, plans to sell 4 million shares of common stock at a price ranging from $10 to $12 a share. Money raised would be used pay $22.2 million in cash for stock of the companies it's acquiring and retire $15.3 million in debts.

There are two distinct classes of Cannes Film Festival visitors. A select few get invited to Paul Allen's yacht party, and most others don't. A handful of Cannes visitors stay in five-star beachfront suites, but pretty much everyone else squeezes into small apartments. And when it comes to buying films, the elite American distributors look for mainstream hits, while the masses are left to pick over the countless foreign-language titles, many of which will never be sold or seen.

Hollywood loves foreign-language films -- as long as it doesn't have to release them. American studios, producers and filmmakers are pursuing remakes of several prominent foreign titles -- including "Let the Right One In," "Tell No One" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" -- even as most domestic distributors steer clear of everything with subtitles. "It's funny how many remakes there are," says producer Rick Schwartz, who recently completed an English-language version of France's "13 (Tzameti)"

One story depicts girls coming of age in India. Another follows a group of seniors as they compete in an international pingpong championship in Mongolia. Closer to home is the portrait of local priest Father Greg Boyle and his work with ex-gang members. Then there's a look at "fruit detectives" from around the world in search of exotic varieties. Those are among eight documentaries that will be shown on designated nights at two dozen theaters nationwide this spring as part of the Docurama series.

The future of Herbalife is riding on Latinos. The Los Angeles company estimates that Latinos account for about 60% of its U.S. sales made through its network of independent distributors. And a growing slice of those sales are coming from informal nutrition clubs run out of people's homes and strip mall shops. It's a cultural phenomenon that got its start in Mexico and is quickly catching on among immigrants who have moved to Southern California. Budding entrepreneurs like Angel Perez, a 27-year-old from Inglewood, are forming the backbone to Herbalife's growth.

When a woman smashed into a Moorpark home with her car last June, police at first thought they were dealing with a garden-variety DUI. Instead, the incident led Ventura County prosecutors to file charges against three alleged distributors of "bath salts" - designer drugs that can cause psychotic episodes and are readily available in many head shops and on the Internet. At a news conference Tuesday, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said the prosecution is probably the first of its kind in California.

This just got personal. Herbalife Ltd. has obtained the rights to domain names such as therealbillackman.com and billackman.net, a sign that the Los Angeles nutritional products company may be planning a public campaign against one of its biggest critics -- billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Ackman said Herbalife is worried about his assertions that it is a pyramid scheme in which distributors are paid more for recruiting new distributors than for selling its diet shakes and protein powders.

PARK CITY, Utah - A group of star-driven dramas and comedies, plus a half-dozen documentaries, have caught the fancy of buyers at the Sundance Film Festival, with distributors ponying up nearly $25 million in the last few days for movies they hope will return their investment in spades. Fox Searchlight paid close to $10 million for a Steve Carell movie, and Sony shelled out almost $4 million on a Jane Austen-themed comedy. Relativity Media spent $4 million for a Joseph Gordon-Levitt porn comedy and the Weinstein Co. put up about $2 million for a well-received drama, "Fruitvale.

NEW YORK -- The investor presentation featured protein shakes and granola bars, entreaties for more hugs in the world, and accusations of lies and snobbery, all to counter a $1-billion bet that Herbalife, the Southern California company, will soon go down the tubes. Who says Wall Street is more boring these days? The presentation was the latest move in a battle between Herbalife, which sells nutrition powders, bars and vitamins through a network of individual distributors, and Bill Ackman, founder and chief of Pershing Square Capital Management.

Marketers say they plan to increase spending on online brand advertising in a new report that comes just weeks before the major digital distributors are preparing to woo Madison Avenue in a series of advertising presentations. The new 2013 Online Advertising Performance Report, produced jointly by the CMO Council and the Nielsen Co.'s Vizu, a unit that specializes in measuring online ad effectiveness, found that advertisers are changing how they view the medium. Though they once used online primarily for direct response, marketers who responded to this year's survey said they plan to allocate more of their digital dollars to brand advertising that's used to promote a company, product or service.

Re Terry Pristin and James Bates' "The Climbing Game" (Section A, March 29): As an entertainment attorney who represents many independent filmmakers, I often find myself in the position of trying to get unscrupulous distributors to live up to their contracts. I am constantly amazed at how many distributors simply refuse to abide by their agreements. I am not talking here about the major studios. While they engage in creative accounting by interpreting ambiguous clauses in their favor, they usually feel obliged to comply with the clear terms of their contracts.

NEW YORK - "Watch out for the dead bird. " Eric Beckman, president of GKIDS, is climbing out of his office window to take in the skyline view from a narrow terrace 26 floors above Lower Manhattan. Inside, a staff of seven taps at computers in two rooms crammed with boxes of DVDs, film reels and posters of animated movies from France, Japan and the U.K. The GKIDS office feels more like an old record store than the headquarters of a company that has helped three movies earn Oscar nominations in as many years.

Get ready for a new branch in "The Tree of Life" debate. Magnolia Pictures said Friday morning it had acquired "To the Wonder," Terrence Malick's follow-up to 'Tree," and will release it theatrically next year. The move concludes a month-long period in which distributors had vacillated on a picture that had divided audiences at the Venice and Toronto International Film festivals. Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles called "Wonder" a "romantic, haunting and beautiful film that will be endlessly rewarding for movie lovers.