Word: matsushita
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...shake-up inspired talk that Sony (1994-95 sales: $44.8 billion) might now follow the lead of fellow Japanese giant Matsushita, which sold control of MCA and its Universal Studios to Seagram last April for $5.7 billion. "The real significance of Schulhof's ouster is that it is the last nail in the coffin of synergy between hardware and software," says analyst Porter Bibb, who follows the entertainment industry for the firm Ladenburg, Thalmann. "You can count the days until the movie business is sold...
...lately been involved in its own corporate melodrama. In 1990 Matsushita bought the company in a $6.6 billion deal arranged by the movie Mephisto, Michael Ovitz, chief of Creative Artists Agency. Profits were plentiful, thanks to a flourishing music division, helped by acquiring David Geffen's record holdings, and a folio of hit films, most of them produced by Steven Spielberg. And at first, Japanese-American relations were smooth. Then some of the Matsushita executives who were on good terms with MCA president Sidney J. Sheinberg were fired. Says MCA movie chief Tom Pollock: "I believe if the Matsushita administration...
Sheinberg, a brassy American entrepreneur, wanted to diversify his business, but the conservative Japanese refused. Like Godzilla in hibernation, Matsushita sat in its Osaka cave, occasionally emerging to roar No! "Sid would have bought Virgin Records, he would have bought nbc," says Irving Azoff, MCA's former music boss. "He was really frustrated that the Japanese wouldn't let him do any of that." The brokered marriage was soon looking as vulnerable as Lyle Lovett's to Julia Roberts. And Ovitz, the canny matchmaker, was apparently unwilling or unable to save...
...with such hits as E.T., Back to the Future and Jurassic Park) and his personal debt to Sheinberg, whom he calls a mentor. So DreamWorks said some of its products could be distributed by MCA-in a deal that could be worth $1 billion over the next decade-if Matsushita would keep Sheinberg and chairman Lew Wasserman aboard. The Japanese never responded to the offer...
...want to speculate on what I'd like to have happen," Sheinberg said Friday. "And one reason, I guess, is that I don't know." But clearly he wants to put Matsushita behind him. "It means I'll be able to freely go about buying whatever brand of television I want to. There's something to be said for free choice." (Some MCA-ers may not agree: last week there was a run on the company store, as employees scurried to buy Matsushita hardware at discount before it was shipped back to Osaka...