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Fiji’s Village Cinema group – Village 6 in Suva and Village 4 in Lautoka – will soon have a new co-owner.
This follows the announcement in Australia today of a sale agreement entered into between current owner SKYCITY Entertainment Group Limited and Australian-based Amalgamated Holdings Ltd for a reported AU$43.07 million.
“The SKYCITY cinema business is the cinema circuit in New Zealand which includes 14 cinemas (106 screens) located throughout New Zealand and interests in Rialto Cinemas in New Zealand (16 screens) and SKYCITY Cinemas Fiji (10 screens),” reported www.tradingmarkets.com
“The transaction is expected to close by February 15, 2010.”
While this sale affects the ownership of the Fiji operation, local co-owner Damodar Brothers has reserved comments on the likelihood of changes at operational level.
In an earlier interview with FijiLive, the company had indicated that any sale of SKYCITY would not affect the Fiji operation.
“It won’t affect us. It would be like doing business with somebody else. We have our cinemas here, we operate on our own so whoever takes over shouldn’t make any difference for us to run our cinemas here,” Damodar Brothers production manager Vijay Nair had told FijiLive last year, when SKYCITY’s sale intent, first announced in 2006, dragged on with no buyers for the struggling cinema business.
Initially, the Fiji cinemas were in a three way partnership: Village Force, Village Roadshow and local partner Damodar Brothers. Four years ago Village Force was bought out by Sky City when it moved into the cinema business. About two years ago, Village Roadshow departed the cinema business because they were more into making movies. Its shares were also taken over by Sky City.
According to www.tradingmarkets.com, the acquisition of the SKYCITY cinema circuit in New Zealand complements Amalgamated Holding’s dominant position within the Australian exhibition market and, including Germany and the Middle East, and takes its total screens to over 1,300 globally.
