There was no immediate reaction from Disney or Reliance.
New Delhi:
Reliance Industries has signed a “binding agreement” with Walt Disney’s local unit for a merger deal, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, in a major blow to the country’s billion-dollar entertainment industry.
India’s entertainment market is already one of the largest in the world, the merger is expected to create a huge and powerful entertainment giant.
Reports of the deal come as billionaire tycoon and chairman of oil-to-telecom giant Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani is set to host Disney chief Robert Iger for his son’s wedding in Gujarat on March 1.
The deal is expected to see Reliance’s media unit and its affiliates own at least 61 percent of the merged entity, while Disney will hold the rest, Bloomberg said.
There was no immediate reaction from Disney or Reliance.
Disney has been under immense pressure since Iger left the company, but he was brought out of semi-retirement more than a year ago when his successor underperformed.
Mr Ambani, 66, is the 10th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list.
He has invited a guest list of powerful businessmen and politicians to celebrate the wedding of his son Anant Ambani and an industrialist’s daughter Radhika Merchant from March 1-3.
CNBC-TV18, a broadcaster partly owned by Reliance, said Ambani’s guest list included Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan, along with investment and banking heads as well as Bollywood and cricket stars. Were.
Other guests include Ivanka Trump, the former US president’s daughter, as well as former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the King of Bhutan.
Last month, the proposed $10 billion merger between Zee Entertainment and the local unit of Japanese giant Sony was reportedly called off due to disagreements over who would head the new entity.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
