Leonine Studios CEO Fred Kogel Talks Next Steps For German Group, Slowing M&A Activity & Local Market Weakness: “It Will Come Back” – Zurich Summit
deadline.comLeonine Studios founder and CEO Fred Kogel has said he does not expect his Germany-focused content group to expand much more in the near future, after four years of rapid and continuous growth.
The veteran film and TV exec was talking about the journey around the creation of Leonine Studios in 2019 in an onstage conversation with CAA Media Finance Co-head Benjamin Kramer at the Zurich Film Festival’s finance and industry-focused Zurich Summit on Saturday.
Kogel will be feted with the Zurich Film Festival’s Game Changer Award on Sunday, following in the footsteps of Pamela Abdy, Patrick Wachsberger as well as Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. “There are many companies who drop by Leonine at the moment who say: ‘Can we be interesting for you in the German market?’,” said the veteran exec. “There are always two questions for us: ‘Who is the talent and what kind of programs they do, are they really good?’ Secondly, let’s look at the balance sheet.
Then the question is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. At the moment the question is more ‘no’,” he said. Launched in early 2019 on the foundation stones of the Tele München Group and theatrical distributor Universum Film as an integrated production, distribution and licensing group, Leonine Studios currently gathers just over 20 100%-owned brands.
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