Disney is on the look out of a buyer for its struggling Miramax Unit. According to a mergers and acquisitions expert, the Miramax film unit of the Walt Disney Company is open for bidding and has attracted around 10 bidders. The film unit has a 700-film library that includes films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’. The initial discussions imply a price of over $700 million for the art house label.
Miramax delivered specialty films like “Chicago”, “The Queen”, “Kill Bill”, “No Country for Old Men” and “The English Patient” and many of the films in the library were nominated for more than 200 Academy Awards. Disney has been looking to find a bidder for the label and scale down its division even announcing the closure of Miramax in October.
Summit Entertainment is a potential buyer while the Weinstein brothers who founded Miramax are not among the bidders till now. Summit Entertainment is the privately owned studio that released ‘Twilight’ blockbusters and is currently rich in cash. However, it doesn’t have a large library.



Greenhill Capital Partners is backing Acrisure, a Michigan-based insurance agency operator, by investing $20 million. The PE firm’s deal plans to back the mergers and acquisitions minded insurance company’s expansion.
Diamond Castle Partners is a New York based equity firm which bought Suture Express Inc. Suture Express is a distributor of disposable medical and surgical products. Linden LLC and CHS Private Equity LP are the investment arms of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC. They are a group of investors who exited the company after an ownership of more than three years.
US drugmaker Cephalon Inc is planning to expand into generic drug business to diversify its product line. With an increase in its shares by 1.5 percent, the company is looking to expand internationally. Cephalon announced that they would be buying Mepha AG for about $590 million for expansion.
Internet giant yahoo reported a $153 million net profit in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the sales of the company continue to fall. But still, this was the best quarterly financial performance since Carol.A.Bartz took over as the chief executive a year ago. This profit is good as compared to $303 million loss in the same period last year. However, the revenues fell by 4% to $1.7 billion.
Microsoft reported a quarterly profit and revenue that soared as compared to last year profits. This was a result of the sales of the company’s latest operating system, Windows 7. The news came as a boost for the software giants whose stock rose about 0.6% in the after hours trading, after it had slided 2% during the regular trading hours.
Google reported quarterly sales in double digits for the first time in the year. Google is in a turbulent confrontation with China, but the online advertising business of the company is in full flow driving Google far ahead of its rivals.
Amazon.com shares surged after the annual profits of the online retailer soared 42%. This was against the expectations of Wall Street and showed that even in the shaky economy the consumers were comfortable in spending some money through online shopping.
Per capita income is often used to measure the wealth of a nation’s population, generally in comparison to others. Per capita income is the amount received by each individual, of the annual income of the country. It is reported in units of currency per year and is calculated by dividing the total personal income by the midyear population.