MUMBAI: Global financial services firm JPMorgan has formed the JPMorgan Entertainment Advisors (JPMorgan EA) to provide a range of financial and strategic advice, services and products to clients of all types in the entertainment and related media businesses.
The new unit will be led by industry veterans Alan Levine (formed Sony Pictures Entertainment president and COO) and Ken Lemberger (counsel to the law firm of Kaye Scholer in Century City, California), who have over 70 years of combined entertainment industry experience.
The new group will focus on assisting clients in the development and structuring of all forms of business strategies and models, the raising of capital and the selection of and ongoing advice to management, including client’s industry specific relationships, such as their production, distribution and licensing arrangements, the expansion of their existing distribution and exhibition businesses, and the creation of new industry initiatives. JPMorgan EA will offer JPMorgan’s industry-leading financial products that have been tailored to the entertainment industry since the early 1920’s and will draw upon the full spectrum of JPMorgan’s world-wide resources, products and services.
Levine and Lemberger have extensive strategic and operational experience, business plan development and negotiation skills and bring to JPMorgan EA a depth of knowledge and operational experience. The two also have structured and executed a significant number of complicated entertainment transactions.
“This effort builds upon our success as the leading financier to the entertainment industry by greatly expanding our capabilities to offer an enhanced range of services and products in this space. We have the highest respect for both Alan and Ken and we are delighted they will lead our new effort,” said JPMorgan’s Entertainment Industries Group head John Miller.
“We are excited at the opportunity to combine our strategic and operational experience with JPMorgan’s entertainment franchise and extend the firm’s ability to provide a wider and deeper range of services and products by helping create, structure and manage the business of our clients,” added Levine.
Also joining the new group as a principal will be veteran JPMorgan entertainment banker David Shaheen, a key member of JPMorgan’s Entertainment Industries Group who has specialized in highly structured financings and advisory assignments for the past 12 years.
Shaheen joined JPMorgan in 1993 and is currently an executive director in the Los Angeles based JPMorgan Entertainment Industries Group.
