By Kevin McCauley
Fleishman-Hillard is handling media connected to Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group’s $2.6B takeover of AMC Entertainment Group, owner of nearly half of America’s top 50 grossing movie theaters.
The deal, according to a statement from Dalian CEO Wang Jianlin, makes his $17B conglomerate the key player in the world’s top two movie markets. It runs 86 theaters with 730 screens in China.
Kansas City-based AMC has a total of more than 5,000 screens in mostly large metro areas that entertained more than 200M people during the past year. It’s the world No. 1 IMAX operator.
Dalian promises to take a hands-off approach to AMC management once the deal is finalized and expects little impact on AMC’s 18,500-member work force.
AMC is owned by a private sector group that included Bain Capital, Apollo Global Management, Carlyle Group, CCMP Capital Advisors and Spectrum Equity Investors.
It uses Rubenstein Communications for PR.
F-H, which is part of Omnicom, has senior VP Jeremy Jacobs working the U.S. end of the deal, joined by Pamela Leung (SVP, Hong Kong) and Winter Wright (VP, Beijing) in China.
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