Joint Venture

Looks like Oprah Winfrey has had one of her trademark "aha!" moments. Winfrey and Discovery Communications Inc., partners in the Oprah Winfrey Network, announced cutbacks and an executive restructuring at the struggling cable channel. The moves follow OWN's decision Friday to cancel its high-profile Rosie O'Donnell talk show and will result in 30 staffers being let go and executives from Discovery Communications being brought in to oversee key operations. The changes come as OWN continues to struggle to find its voice.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.announced plans to build a studio in Shanghai in what the Glendale company billed as a landmark agreement with two state-owned Chinese media companies. The creator of the "Shrek" movies said Friday that it was forming Oriental DreamWorks, a joint venture with China Media Capital and Shanghai Media Group, in concert with Shanghai Alliance Investment - an investment arm of the Shanghai municipal government - to establish a family entertainment company in China.

A Los Angeles film company that invested in a $500-million fund to co-finance Sony Pictures movies filed a lawsuit alleging that the fund's manager and a later investor cheated it out of at least $44 million. Aramid Entertainment Fund alleged in a lawsuit Wednesday that the Sony fund, which co-financed 18 movies since 2008, was shut down late last year in a manner that benefited both fund manager Relativity Media in West Hollywood and the investor, New York money management firm Fortress Investment Group, at Aramid's expense.

Starbucks is continuing its march toward global conquest. The latte lord aims to open 50 outlets in India by year's end. The expansion will come through a 50-50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages. Tata Starbucks Ltd., as the venture is known, hopes to capitalize on the growing thirst of many Indians for a quality cup of java. According to the Associated Press, India was home to 1,600 coffee houses last year , up from just 700 in 2007. The consulting firm Technopak Advisors expects India's $170 million cafe market to grow 30% a year, adding up to 2,700 more outlets over the next five years.

Penetrating the Chinese movie market has long presented any number of challenges to Hollywood studios, from quotas to censorship to cultural sensitivities Add raising money to the list of potential problems. Legendary East, the Chinese film venture established this summer by film finance and production company Legendary Entertainment and its chairman, budding Hollywood mogul Thomas Tull, has canceled plans to raise $220.5 million on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this year after it was unable to find enough investors.

Best Buy Co. said Monday that it will shut down its 11 big-box stores in Britain and buy out Carphone Warehouse's interest in a joint profit-sharing agreement for $1.3 billion. The Richfield, Minn., company also said it will launch a venture with Carphone Warehouse called Global Connections that will advise retailers around the world on how to boost performance of their mobile products businesses and services, in the mold of Best Buy Mobile. Best Buy's announcement is a tacit admission that its $2.1-billion joint venture with Carphone Warehouse, first announced in 2009, has not lived up to expectations.

Walt Disney Co. says it plans to launch a broadcast version of Disney Channel in Russia next year, enabling the entertainment giant to deliver its family programming to about 40 million households in the increasingly important market. Disney will acquire a 49% stake in Seven TV network, a national TV network in Russia, enabling it to air Disney Channel programming on broadcast stations in 54 urban markets, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as in rural areas. The company did not disclose financial terms.

Bringing commercial spaceflight a step closer to reality, a privately funded aerospace firm has built a production plant where it will assemble the world's first fleet of passenger-ready spaceships. The 68,000-square-foot facility next to a runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port about 100 miles north of Los Angeles is one of the first aircraft assembly plants to be built in the region in decades. It'll be home to Spaceship Co. — a joint venture of Mojave-based Scaled Composites and British billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic.

Universal Music Group Inc., the largest music company in the world, is forming a joint venture to manage musicians with Live Nation Entertainment Inc., the world's biggest ticketing, concerts promotions and artist management firm. The deal puts Universal's small cluster of four management companies under Live Nation's Front Line Management Group, whose 90 executives manage 250 artists, including the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney and Christina Aguilera. Under the agreement, Front Line will oversee the joint venture.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Rosneft announced a pact to extract oil and natural gas from the Russian Arctic, the most significant U.S.-Russian corporate deal since President Obama's push to improve ties. The announcement ended any hope that Britain's BP had of reviving its deal with state-owned Rosneft to develop the same Arctic territory. That deal was blocked in May by the billionaire partners in another BP Russian venture. For Exxon, the pact gives the largest U.S. oil company access to substantial reserves in Russia, the world's largest oil producer.