The deal between Toronto’s Alliance Atlantis Communications and Hollywood-based video and film asset management service Point.360 for the purchase of AAC’s post-production houses Tattersall Casablanca, Salter Digital and Calibre Digital Pictures has been scuttled.

The $14-million deal was first announced last summer and was to give AAC a chance to shed some of its assets for the purposes of debt reduction. After a year of speculation as to how the negotiations were progressing, AAC confirmed the deal was off in late May. Former International Image head Chuck Ferkranus has been brought aboard to oversee and assess the three properties.

‘Despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to come to terms with Point.360, so we concluded our discussions there,’ says Kim Robertson, Alliance Atlantis VP of corporate and public affairs. ‘It’s important for us to protect the value of our post-production businesses and there has been a state of uncertainty there, certainly, for the past few months, so we felt it was very important to ensure that we have strong leadership there.’

The leadership comes in the form of Toronto’s Ferkranus, cofounder of International Image, a service provider for the managing and digitizing of media for the entertainment industry, who takes over as CEO of all three post houses.

‘My mandate is to completely understand what each of the three companies are, what they bring to the table, what services they provide to the clients, and how comprehensive and precise the services are,’ says Ferkranus. ‘Considering all the issues and where these companies should be 24 or 36 months from now, the instruction is to create a strategic road map explaining how to get from here to there.’

Ferkranus calls Calibre, TC and Salter Digital ‘quality organizations that intrinsically have a lot to offer,’ and he isn’t sure if any major changes will come in the short term.

Halifax-based Salter Digital VP Rob Power says the Point.360 deal proved only a minor distraction.

‘I think it’s going to get the three focused again now that this is behind us and we can get back to really serving our clients,’ he says.

National Bank of Canada financial analyst Adam Shine calls this episode in the AAC history books a ‘non-event.’

‘At the end of the day, the underlying investment story is much bigger than that particular event,’ says Shine. ‘While it appeared as though the sales of the post-production assets could serve as a non-core divestiture, which would have added some incremental proceeds to help the company’s debt-reduction efforts, the fact that the transaction is not going through and the fact that a partnership is being formed to maintain the post assets in-house, I don’t think changes anything.’

Robertson says Ferkranus taking control of the post facilities is a leap in the right direction, however the sale of the properties in the future is not an impossibility.

-www.allianceatlantis.com

-www.point360.com

-www.tattersallcasablanca.com

-www.salter.com

-www.calibredigital.com

Dustin Dinoff