Joint Ventures

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.

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.

Litigation may be all that's left for New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. The unique, quarter-century partnership between the former General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. produced millions of cars at a sprawling factory in Fremont, Calif., but the joint effort fell apart last year in GM's bankruptcy. Toyota and NUMMI have both sued the automaker, called Motors Liquidation Co. in Bankruptcy Court, seeking millions of dollars in damages for abandoning sales of the Pontiac Vibe last year.

Let's begin by bowing our heads in silent prayer for Len Elmore. He has a new job and will need all the help he can get. You remember Elmore, the 6-foot-9 former NBA player, who does intelligent commentary for network television on college basketball. A three-time All-Atlantic Coast Conference player at Maryland, he was the 13th pick in the 1974 NBA draft, going to the Washington Bullets. He played eight seasons in the NBA, two more in the old ABA. In May, Elmore was appointed chief executive of an online support program for youth basketball called iHoops.

Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, which defaulted on two loans last year, has found new investors and successfully recapitalized, its owners said Tuesday. The deal allows Los Angeles developer Lowe Enterprises to retain ownership of the $480-million resort, which opened last year amid the worst travel market since the Great Depression. Lowe was one of hundreds of California hotel owners that received notices of default or faced foreclosures by their lenders last year. Terms of the transaction announced Tuesday include an extension of the loans on the property and new capital commitments of more than $100 million.

Comcast Corp.'s second-in-command, Steve Burke, will become chief executive of NBC Universal when the merger of the entertainment assets of Comcast and General Electric Co. is complete, the two companies announced Sunday. Burke, 52, will succeed Jeff Zucker, 45, who said Friday that he would step down when Philadelphia-based Comcast assumes control of NBC Universal, which is expected to happen late this year or early 2011. The two companies are awaiting the federal government's approval of their $30-billion transaction.