Icahn

Carl Icahn is turning up the heat on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's creditors to reject the Spyglass Entertainment management plan and merge the financially hobbled studio with Lions Gate Entertainment. The billionaire investor on Tuesday launched a new tender offer to buy a majority of MGM's $4 billion in debt for 53 cents on the dollar. The bid gives MGM's debt holders, who are determining the future of the near-bankrupt studio, a premium over the current trading price of about 45 cents on the dollar.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is ready to spend more than $400 million to push forward a merger between two of Hollywood's biggest independent movie studios. Already the largest shareholder in Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Icahn offered to pay 45 cents on the dollar Thursday to buy $963million of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's $4 billion in debt. Along with the roughly $500 million worth of debt he already owns, that additional amount would make Icahn one of MGM's largest creditors ?

The creditors of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer face a crucial decision: whether to approve a prepackaged bankruptcy plan that would reboot the financially hobbled Hollywood studio under the management of Spyglass Entertainment, or pause and weigh a new merger proposal from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Lions Gate, the studio behind the Tyler Perry films and the TV show "Mad Men," on Monday proposed a merger with MGM that won the backing of Carl Icahn, Lions Gate's largest shareholder, who also owns about 12% of MGM's more than $4 billion in debt.

After spending the last 18 months feuding in shareholder letters and in the media, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and its largest investor, Carl Icahn, will go head-to-head in court next week. Icahn is suing the film and TV studio in Vancouver, Canada, where Lions Gate is domiciled, over a controversial financial transaction designed to fend off the activist investor's long-running attempt to seize control of the company and oust its management. The outcome of the hearing, which begins Tuesday and could last several days, will provide a crucial advantage for one of the two sides in determining whether Lions Gate will remain in the control of its current leaders or end up in Icahn's hands.

Carl Icahn's appetite for Hollywood is growing beyond Lions Gate Entertainment. The activist investor is once again quietly buying up debt in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, people familiar with the situation said. He also has amassed a substantial amount of debt in troubled home-video chain Blockbuster Inc. Icahn had accumulated and then sold debt in MGM earlier this year. In the last few weeks he has acquired what one person close to the situation described as a single-digit percentage in the studio's nearly $4 billion worth of debt.

A good August ended on a sour note for Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. After releasing back to back box-office hits "The Expendables" and "The Last Exorcism" and scoring a best drama Emmy for its cable television series "Mad Men" for a third consecutive year, Lions Gate was surprised Tuesday when its largest shareholder, Carl Icahn, raised his bid to take over the movie and TV studio's outstanding shares to $7.50 a share from $6.50. The increased offer makes it more difficult to fend off the activist investor in his aggressive fight for control of the studio.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has increased his holding in Motorola Inc. to about 10.4%, according to documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the filing, Icahn spent $86.2 million on 11.5 million shares of Motorola this week. Icahn had reported Aug. 3 that he had raised his stake to 9.99% since May 7, when he held 8.75% of Motorola's shares. Motorola is planning to split in two in the first quarter of next year, separating its cellphone and set-top-box business from its enterprise mobility business.

When a movie is about to open, its actors and filmmakers usually think only about whether audiences will show up and like what they see. But Sylvester Stallone, who stars in and directed this coming weekend's "The Expendables," is acutely aware of a pressing matter of an entirely different nature: the behind-the-scenes war raging between the movie's distributor, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., and corporate raider Carl Icahn, who has been trying to seize control of the company for more than a year.

Hopes that Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and its largest shareholder, Carl Icahn, were on the road to peace vaporized Tuesday as both sides took drastic actions in a renewed fight for control of the company. As a 10-day truce between the long warring parties expired, Icahn launched another hostile bid to buy the remaining shares of Lions Gate for $6.50. Lions Gate swiftly responded with a move to weaken Icahn's position by converting $100 million of debt into 16.2 million new shares of stock.

Peace didn't last long. Activist investor Carl Icahn has launched a new hostile takeover offer for film and television studio Lions Gate Entertainment at $6.50 per share, ending a 10-day détente in which the two sides ceased hostilities to discuss merger and acquisition opportunities for the company. Icahn is already Santa Monica-based Lions Gate's largest stockholder, with 38% of the company, due to shares accumulated in a previous $7-per-share tender, which expired June 30. His new offer positions him to potentially seize control of the company, which has seen its stock price drop to close to $6 since Icahn's bid expired.