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Irving Azoff Starts New Entertainment Business

September 4, 2013 by

Since the music executive Irving Azoff resigned as Live Nation Entertainment’s executive chairman at the end of last year, speculation about his next venture has been something of an industry pastime. Would he go into television? Music publishing? Something digital?

The answer is all of the above, and perhaps more.

On Wednesday, Mr. Azoff, 65, announced the creation of Azoff MSG Entertainment, a multifaceted company backed by $175 million from the Madison Square Garden Company, whose executive chairman, James L. Dolan, is one of Mr. Azoff’s longtime supporters.

The company, of which Mr. Azoff will be chairman and chief executive, will include his artist management business, whose clients include the Eagles, Van Halen, Steely Dan and Christina Aguilera; a television and live event division; a 50 percent stake in Digital Brand Architects, which manages bloggers; and a 90 percent interest in a music publishing venture led by Randy Grimmett, a former executive at Ascap, the 99-year-old performing rights organization.

“We want to be a nimble, quick place where people can get answers,” said Mr. Azoff, who got his start as an artist manager in the 1970s and upon his departure from Live Nation did not mince words about his distaste in working for a publicly owned company.

The Madison Square Garden Company — which is publicly traded — will pay $125 million for a 50 percent stake in Azoff MSG Entertainment, and provide up to $50 million of credit to the company, according to an announcement. Mr. Azoff will also serve as a consultant to the Madison Square Garden Company.

In a joint interview, Mr. Azoff and Mr. Dolan described the mission of the new company as being somewhat loose, saying they see it as a lean, digitally focused company that will address the needs of the evolving music business. They also pointed to Madison Square Garden’s $100 million renovation of the Forum, an arena in Inglewood, Calif., as an example of how their work could benefit the public.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, the music industry has changed dramatically, and not necessarily for the better,” Mr. Dolan said. “I expect that this venture will address that and find new technologies that will help artists, and new business opportunities that we will invest in together.”

They also view the company as “a high-growth vehicle,” as Mr. Dolan put it, that could expand through acquisitions.

Mr. Dolan joined the board of Live Nation in 2011, the year after that company merged with Ticketmaster and Mr. Azoff became its executive chairman. After Mr. Azoff left, Mr. Dolan resigned from the board and his company divested itself of its 3.9 million shares in the company for $44 million. With Live Nation stock on the rise since January, that stake would be worth about $67 million today.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/business/media/irving-azoff-starts-new-entertainment-business.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Nokia Map Project Sheds Light on Belarus’s Roads

August 11, 2013 by

But in May, a group of 600 volunteers in Belarus, mostly geography students, teachers and local mapping aficionados, began carefully canvassing the flat, marshy country, logging the names of streets and highways, along with the exact locations of important stops like gas stations, hotels and restaurants.

The catalyst for Belarus’s geographic coming out, so to speak, was not a change of heart by the longtime president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, but the pursuit of a pressing market opportunity by Nokia, the Finnish maker of mobile phones, whose own digital mapping business, HERE, has become one of the world’s most active cartographers.

In just three months, Nokia’s volunteers in Belarus added 22,000 kilometers, or 14,000 miles, of streets and roadways and 11,000 places of interest to the global database at HERE, formerly Nokia Maps. Besides rendering the maps for the millions of users of Nokia’s line of cellphones and Lumia smartphones, HERE’s information powers the maps of Microsoft Bing, Yahoo and AOL, along with the in-dash navigation systems of automobiles made by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Toyota.

Nokia is in a race with Google and TomTom, the Dutch maker of auto navigation devices, mapping and traffic data, to create a detailed digital representation of the physical world as a foundation for profitable location-based services, said Martin Garner, an analyst in London who covers mobile services at CCS Insight, a research firm.

So far, the promise of context-based services — suggesting restaurants, traffic routes or other personal endeavors based on location — has been greater than the reality. Nokia is losing money on its HERE division; Google and TomTom do not break out details on location-based sales and profits, Mr. Garner said in an interview.

“We’re in the early stages of mobile context services, which represent a large future opportunity,” he said.

Nokia took the time to fill in the topographic blanks in Belarus, a market with 10 million consumers, after map enthusiasts there organized on VK, a Russian social network that competes with Facebook, and approached Nokia with a request to map their country digitally. The request coincided with demand from phone users in Russia, who are increasingly making the 20-hour drive through Belarus and Poland to Western Europe for business or vacations.

“One of the biggest requests we received for map data in Belarus was from Russia,” said Andreas Herger, a senior manager for location content at HERE, which is based in Berlin and oversees Nokia’s location-based services and mapping business.

After spending $8.1 billion in 2007 to buy Navteq, a Chicago-based producer of geographic data and mapping software, Nokia has expanded its commercial sale of mobile geographic data, producing a series of ever-more-exact and detailed global maps.

In the three months that ended June 30, Nokia increased HERE’s sales of mapping data and services to automakers and other external customers by 8.3 percent to €195 million, or $261 million, from €180 million a year earlier. Research and development expenses of €207 million pulled HERE to a quarterly operating loss of €89 million.

Unlike paper maps, digital maps are not static. They are updated constantly to ensure relevance. The 6,000 employees of HERE in 56 countries, in addition to their volunteers, generate 2.7 million changes each day to HERE’s global map database. Nokia, like Google, also operates a fleet of mapmaking cars to compile data.

The goal, said Stephen Elop, Nokia’s president and chief executive, is to provide a detailed, up-to-date cartographic archive to drive Nokia’s location-based services.

“We’re creating maps that are fresh and accurate down to real-time traffic information and the curvature of the roadway,” Mr. Elop said in response to a written question. “So, no matter where you are — Boston or Belarus — you can make informed decisions about navigating your daily life.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/technology/nokia-map-project-sheds-light-on-belaruss-roads.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Disney’s Chief Agrees to Hold Off on His Retirement Until 2016

July 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Under the terms of Mr. Iger’s contract, signed in 2011, he was to step down as chief executive in March 2015 and remain as executive chairman until the middle of the following year. But Disney’s board, which was eager to retain a leader with a highly successful track record for as long as possible, last week asked him to stay on as both chief executive and chairman until June 30, 2016.

Mr. Iger’s compensation will not change. In 2012 he received $37.1 million, according to figures compiled for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm.

“Now Disney will continue to have the full benefit of Mr. Iger’s leadership,” Orin C. Smith, the independent lead director of Disney’s board, said in a statement. Mr. Smith cited Mr. Iger’s ability to “consistently deliver against a strategy of producing high-quality branded content, technology innovation and international expansion.”

Big media companies, notably News Corporation and Viacom, have a spotty track record when it comes to succession-planning, and Mr. Iger himself took over Disney in 2005 after a period of turbulence following a bitter dispute between Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney.

But keeping Mr. Iger in place does not signal that Disney needs more time to groom a successor. Disney has a deep bench of chief executive candidates, including James A. Rasulo, chief financial officer; Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Disney’s theme park division; and Anne Sweeney, co-chairwoman of Disney Media Networks.

Rather, retaining Mr. Iger’s services reflects an if-it’s-not-broken-don’t-fix-it strategy. Disney has suffered the occasional setback — a movie flop, for instance, like “John Carter” last year — and has continued to struggle in video games, but over all the company has been soaring. Its shares closed Monday at $63.93, a 32 percent increase compared with one year ago.

Disney reported profit of $5.68 billion last year, an 18 percent increase from a year earlier, on $42.28 billion in revenue.

By remaining at Disney’s helm, Mr. Iger will be able to see to fruition the high-stakes opening of Shanghai Disneyland, a sprawling resort on a par with Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The Shanghai entertainment and vacation complex, Disney’s first major outpost in China, is expected to open in late 2015.

Disney is still working to integrate its latest acquisition, Lucasfilm, and restart the Star Wars franchise. ABC, now owned by Disney, also is under pressure to introduce a hit this fall.

Mr. Iger, 62, started his entertainment career at ABC in 1974 and took over as chief executive of Disney in 2005. He will be 65 upon his departure; Disney’s mandatory retirement age for board members is 74.

Since chief executives typically leave their corner offices reluctantly, attention has focused on what Mr. Iger has planned for his long-term future. There has been speculation that he has political ambitions. He has steadfastly declined to comment on his life beyond Disney.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/business/media/iger-gets-extension-as-disney-chief-executive.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Dow Barrels Ahead After Debt Remarks

July 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Already rallying on earnings reports, stocks leaped further ahead Tuesday after President Obama announced a breakthrough on the debt-ceiling talks.

Earlier, stocks had risen more than 1 percent after Coca-Cola said its net income rose 18 percent on higher overseas sales and after I.B.M.’s results late Monday beat analysts’ estimates.

But it was after Mr. Obama spoke that the Dow Jones industrial average powered through a gain of more than 220 points to a high of 12,607.56. The Dow ended the day up 202.26, or 1.63 percent, to 12,587.42. The broader Standard Poor’s 500-stock index rose 21.29 points, or 1.63 percent, to 1,326.73, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite gained 61.41, or 2.22 percent, to 2,826.52.

President Obama said there was “progress” in negotiations with bipartisan lawmakers over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, leading to a deficit-cutting proposal by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that was “broadly consistent” with what the administration was pursuing.

Earlier, the Commerce Department said housing starts in the United States rose more than expected in June, reaching a six-month high, and permits for future construction unexpectedly increased.

Investors also took in quarterly earnings announcements from three major banks: Goldman Sachs reported a profit of $1.05 billion, a relatively weak showing; Bank of America said it lost $8.8 billion, in line with expectations as it settled legal claims related to its troubled mortgage division; and Wells Fargo reported a 29 percent increase in profit, as loan losses eased.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.65 percent at 5,789.99 points, while Germany’s DAX rose 1.19 percent to 7,192.67. The CAC 40 in France was 1.21 percent higher at 3,694.95 points.

The main point of interest in Europe this week will probably be Thursday’s meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels. They are scheduled to discuss a second bailout package for Greece, which relies on such lifelines to meet its obligations.

Just two days ahead of the meeting, it remained unclear whether a mechanism whereby Greece avoids a default will be clinched. If the credit rating agencies say Greece is in default following the bailout package, then there are real worries in the markets of renewed instability.

The euro has largely managed to withstand pressures of a potential Greek default in recent weeks, and was trading 0.3 percent higher at $1.4170.

Some Asian stocks pared some of their early losses after the European open, but still ended mostly down. Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average extended losses to decline 0.9 percent to 9,889.72 after being closed for a national holiday Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rebounded to gain 0.5 percent to 21,902.40 while mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.7 percent to 2,796.98.

Oil prices reached $97 a barrel amid expectations that United States crude supplies dropped last week. Benchmark oil for August delivery was up $1.48 to $97.41 a barrel in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/business/Daily-Stock-Market-Activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,