NEW YORK – Miramax plans to raise $550 million via a bond offering to pay a dividend of about $142 million to owners and refinance existing debt at lower interest rates, Bloomberg News reported.
The studio’s owners include Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital.
The debt that the company is looking to refinance was taken on when Colony and investor Ron Tutor bought the studio from the Walt Disney Co. last December for $660 million.
Under the leadership of CEO Mike Lang, a former News Corp. executive, Miramax has signed online distribution deals with Netflix and Hulu, among others, to monetize its content.
An outside spokeswoman for Miramax and Colony told Bloomberg the companies had no comment on the debt offering.
The offering is backed by Miramax’s library of more than 700 films and 14 TV series,
The studio had previously signaled it would look to refinance debt, but didn’t detail how much and when, according to Bloomberg.
