Navarre: finis FUNI

Navarre Corporation
Monday April 4, 2011, 5:54 pm EDT

Navarre Corporation today announced that it has sold FUNimation Entertainment for $24 million in an all cash transaction. Purchasers in the transaction are a group of entities that were newly formed by an investment group that includes Gen Fukunaga, FUNimation Entertainment's chief executive officer, as a minority stakeholder. In connection with the sale, the Company has entered into an agreement to act as FUNimation Entertainment's exclusive distributor in the United States on a continuing basis, and will also act as FUNimation Entertainment's logistics and fulfillment services provider.

MOAR
1. Gen Fukunaga sells FUNI to Navarre for $142 million in 2005
2. ???
3. Gen Fukunaga buys FUNI back from Navarre for $24 million in 2011
= ($118 million) PROFIT!

THAT'S SHOWBIZ, FOLKS!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Zoinks!

Still, it seems we've seen something like this coming for a while -- precious little in the way of shiny discs at retail anymore...

-DVC

Bruce Lewis said...

Oh, yah, we all knew something like this was bound to happen. Navarre has been desperate to unload Funi for years. Gen Fukunaga is said to want to do more US-Japanese co-productions ( = owned content ) and less licensing from here on out, which could be good or bad. I wonder if I ought to get a few pitches ready...?