Industry debates financial role for agencies

April 03, 2007 ICM created an alliance with Newbridge Film Capital, a partnership between Merrill Lynch and Rizvi Traverse Management, and CAA, ICM, WMA and Endeavor have all launched in-house units geared toward packaging and finding financing for independent films. [...] it's news of Endeavor's stake in MRC that has cast the issue in a new light, largely because the agency has an actual investment in an outside company that -- by virtue of its financial contributions -- will have a stake in product. Former Endeavor agent Modi Wiczyk and a former Harvard Business School colleague Asif Satchu founded MRC in 2003, but in the past year, the duo has secured financing from AT&T, the WPP Group and the Goldman Sachs Group, among others, with Endeavor participating as what MRC officials describe as "a nonvoting minority stakeholder."

Subscribe to the Hollywood Reporter and see the entertainment industry from its best angle: the inside looking out. Complete access to real-time news and exclusive analysis that goes behind the scenes from film to television, home video to digital media.

   Subscribe now.