Wanda’s AMC to buy Odeon in global push, leaving Carmike Cinemas waiting

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AMC Theatres, controlled by Chinese bllionaire Wang Jianlin, announced it will buy European movie theater operator Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group in a deal valued at about 921 million pounds. The transaction will make it the biggest movie theatre operator in the world, the company said. Photo: AP

Published: 9:59am, 13 Jul 2016Updated: 10:53pm, 13 Jul 2016

AMC Entertainment Holdings US$1.2 billion purchase of Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group extends Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s movie-theater empire into Europe while leaving open the fate of its deal for the No 4 US chain Carmike Cinemas.

“We have not even made a decision yet whether we will increase at all,” Adam Aron, chief executive officer of AMC Entertainment, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “But what we are going to do is get in dialogue with Carmike and see if the deal can be salvaged.”

The acquisition of London-based Odeon & UCI widens the lead of Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group as the world’s No 1 operator of movie screens while easing pressure on the company’s US-based unit, AMC, to complete its deal for Carmike. Even with Odeon & UCI in the fold, Aron said he has the financing to buy Carmike and is willing to negotiate. He just won’t pay what some Carmike investors have demanded.

“There is only one thing that I am certain of in life, they are not going to get US$40 a share from AMC,” Aron said in the interview. The deal gets “marginal very quickly” for Leawood, Kansas-based AMC above the US$30 threshold, he said earlier. “The Carmike shareholders are going to have to want this transaction to occur.”

Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group applauds as he attends a signing ceremony for a strategic partnership between FIBA and Wanda Group in Beijing on June 16, 2016. Photo: AP

Shares of Carmike, based in Columbus, Georgia, rose as high as US$30.79 following Aron’s comments, before closing up 2.2 pe rcent to US$30.39 in New York. AMC surged 7.3 per cent to US$29.80, the biggest single-day advance since February 16.