From IMDB: MGM Tuesday denied published speculation that it had retained Goldman Sachs to explore a possible sale. In a statement, the studio couched its denial in language that appeared to some to fortify the rumors, saying that while it had indeed retained Goldman Sachs it was doing so “to explore enhancements to MGM’s long-term capital structure.” At the same time, it insisted that its present owners, “are pleased with the company’s current momentum and are committed to the future growth of the studio.” But analysts were not so sure about the company’s current ability to acquire financing for its production slate given the sluggish economy and suggested that the rumors about a possible sale will only make the studio’s efforts to raise cash even more difficult. Nevertheless, other analysts pointed out that MGM — like most other studios — had already reduced its production schedule after going full bore earlier in the year in anticipation of a possible actors’ strike.
Day: August 26, 2008
Sir Martin Gilbert writes: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Somme were inextricably linked. I learned this forty-four years ago, shortly after I was elected to my first university appointment, at Merton College, Oxford. I was twenty-six years old.
In those days there was a strict seating order at college dinners. The head of the college sat in the centre, the senior fellows on either side of him, and the junior fellows at the far ends of the table. Also at the ends were the Emeritus Fellows, long retired, venerable, sometimes garrulous guardians of the college name. Several of them had served in the First World War. When they discovered a historian, new to his craft, filled with the keenness of a youngster amid his elders, they were happy to talk about those distant days, already more than forty years in the past. What Tolkien Taught Me about the Battle of the Somme