Joint Ventures

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.

In the latest sign of China's rising importance in the global aviation industry, Cessna Aircraft Co. said it would develop a plan to build business jets with the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China. The announcement paves the way for Cessna of Wichita, Kan., to become the first U.S. aircraft maker to manufacture business jets in China, the fastest-growing market for the multimillion-dollar planes. "We believe China represents a significant opportunity for growth," said Scott Donnelly, chief executive of Cessna's parent company, U.S. conglomerate Textron Inc., at a signing ceremony Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The Oprah Winfrey Network seems to have everything needed to succeed: some of the best creative minds in the business, strong financial backing, a loyal audience and enthusiastic advertisers eager to buy commercial time. But more than 20 months after the announcement that Winfrey was teaming with Discovery Communications Inc. to create a cable channel that celebrates her ethos, "Living your best life," not much has happened -- except for a revolving door of executives. Three top programmers abruptly left the Los Angeles-based network in recent months, and development spending has been cut. OWN was supposed to have launched by now, but its debut has been pushed back to mid-2010.

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.

Cellular-phone pioneer Craig McCaw and Subhash Chandra, who runs India's most popular television network, won U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval for a joint purchase of satellite-telephone company ICO Global Communications Ltd. McCaw will be the largest shareholder in London-based ICO, with about 46%. Chandra will own 28% and ICO's bondholders, existing shareholders and vendors will split 26%. ICO filed for bankruptcy protection in August, just days after rival Iridium did the same.

The Supreme Court, on a tie vote, cleared the way Monday for Detroit's two daily newspapers to merge their business operations. But the justices left open the pivotal question of what conditions justify giving newspapers a virtual business monopoly. As a practical matter, the high court action ends a 13-year-old newspaper war in the nation's sixth-largest metropolitan area and permits the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News to share their business, printing and advertising operations.

The most ambitious attempt by television companies to retain their audiences on the Web begins today, and the early reviews are surprisingly good. Hulu.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., will launch with many episodes of hit NBC and Fox shows and a small sampling of movies, all with one-quarter the commercial minutes of regular TV.

Microsoft Corp. said it is working with No. 3 U.S. long-distance phone company Sprint Corp. to combine phone and data services, and wants to set standards for unified messaging that combines voicemail, e-mail and pages in one in-box. Microsoft and Sprint plan this summer to begin selling systems that manage phone services such as local, wireless and Internet access and also include voicemail and e-mail on a single computer.

L.L. Knickerbocker Co. said it has formed a 50-50 joint venture with Arkenol Holdings L.L.C. to use Arkenol's technology to make chemicals, biomass solids and liquid fuels to sell in some Asian markets. L.L. Knickerbocker said the joint venture will acquire licenses for Arkenol's technology to convert plant materials into ethanol and other chemicals. The joint venture, which is called Arkenol Asia, will sell the chemicals in Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Laos and India.

Fluor Corp. said Thursday that its Fluor Daniel unit has formed a joint venture with Boston-based engineering services firm Stone & Webster to pursue petrochemical industry construction project jobs. The joint venture, to be headquartered in Houston, will concentrate on the ethylene industry. Ethylene is a major petrochemical feedstock used to manufacture a variety of derivatives, including plastics and solvents.

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.

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.

In the last few years China has emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing movie markets, but government restrictions have limited the ability of American studios to export their films there. Now a top Hollywood finance and production company is turning that formula around with a deal to make big-budget movies in China for export around the world. Legendary Pictures, known for its role in such blockbusters as "The Dark Knight" and "The Hangover," has formed a China-based joint venture called Legendary East.

The Los Angeles Times Media Group and U.S. Local News Network Inc. have formed a joint venture that will include launching two news websites aimed at readers and advertisers in Orange County. The venture, which will be announced today, will allow the companies to share content and advertising sales across the sites -- www.theocnow.com and www.oclnn.com -- and those of three existing Times-owned local newspapers in Orange County: the Coastline Pilot, the Daily Pilot and the Huntington Beach Independent.

Hearst Corp. said "You're hired" to mega-television producer Mark Burnett. Hearst and the producer of such popular reality shows as "The Apprentice" and "Survivor" on Monday announced a 50/50 joint venture that will charge Burnett with the task of creating television shows for the media giant. Hearst owns more than two dozen TV stations along with stakes in cable TV networks Lifetime, A&E, History Channel and ESPN as well as newspapers and magazines. "We were not looking to be in the television production business," Scott Sassa, president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, said in an interview.

The nation's two largest movie theater chains are about to encroach on Hollywood studios' turf. Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. are close to launching a joint venture to acquire and release independent movies, according to people familiar with the situation, a part of the business historically dominated by the Hollywood studios. The move could disrupt the longtime and delicate business relationship between theater operators and studios, in which they have acted as partners and divided a movie's box-office ticket sales.