Vancouver: While its creative and business management is in Los Angeles and Eastern Canada, Lions Gate Entertainment remains a Vancouver-based company, even with the retirement of its Vancouver-based chairman and founder Frank Giustra.

On May 14, Giustra sold 2.5 million shares valued at US$5.5 million to ENT Holding Corp., which is backed by L.A. financiers and brothers Tom and Alec Gores.

Giustra is focusing his attention on his role as head of Vancouver-based Endeavour Financial, a mining consulting firm.

‘[CEO] Jon Feltheimer and his senior management team are superbly executing Lions Gate’s business plan, so the timing is right for me to move on,’ says Giustra in a release. Giustra still holds a substantial common share position in the company.

Lions Gate president Andre Link, who founded Lions Gate Films, will succeed Giustra as the company’s chairman and Vancouver-based director Harald Ludwig has been named Lions Gate’s vice-chairman.

Giustra’s departure from the board, along with the death of Woody Knight and the resignations of developer Joe Houssain and broadcaster Doug Holtby, means four new directors join the board: Gary Newton, a Montreal-based senior executive with L.A.-based investment firm Platinum Equity; entertainment lawyer Mitchell Wolfe; Saskatchewan producer David Doerksen; and Jeff Sagansky, a senior executive formerly with Sony, CBS and Paxson Communications.

L.A.-based Lions Gate spokesman Peter Wilkes says that while management of the company is in the east and the U.S., the core of Lions Gate’s business is in Vancouver with Lions Gate Studios.

-www.lionsgatefilms.com