Amid all the chatter about Michael Jackson's untimely passing, there was mention of his upcoming comeback tour. Behind those plans stood two dealmakers likely familiar to most readers of The Deal: Philip Anschutz and Tom Barrack Jr.
Michael Jackson's sinking music career over the last decade has been no secret, but Anschutz, who owns the world's second-largest entertainment company AEG, overcame the King of Pop's initial apprehensions about coming out of retirement and in January signed him to a concert deal at a meeting in Las Vegas.
The deal would have brought back the "gloved one" to perform in 50 live concerts at the AEG-owned O2 arena in London. The shows would have paid Jackson as much as £100 million ($164 million). The meeting took years of planning, but The London Evening Standard reports the key that got the ball rolling was a call made by Anschutz friend, Barrack, a real estate billionaire who paid via Colony Capital LLC $23.5 billion for Jackson's Neverland Ranch in 2008.
Jackson reportedly was in desperate need for money because of his legal troubles and exorbitant spending. Media reports suggested that he owed close to $400 million. Besides the Neverland transaction, Barrack told Anschutz that he and Dr. Tohme Tohme, Jackson's physician and official spokesperson, would control the pop star's fleeting finances, which included rescheduling $100 million in debt. The dealings were enough to set up the fateful January meeting in Las Vegas where the concert deal was struck.
Randy Phillips, an executive of AEG Live who was a key player in the January meeting, told the Evening Standard: "They [Barrack and Tohme] were restructuring loans and settling all the law suits. Michael had got
into so much trouble because he didn't have the security blanket of managers. As
sophisticated as he is, he is very trusting, almost to a fault."
But Anschutz and his team lead by Phillips had a turnaround strategy for Jackson: "I gave them [Barrack and Tohme] the plan I had been working on -- a four-year period of him playing live, releasing new music and a whole other bunch of commercial tie-ins including a new version of Thriller in 3D that would open on Halloween." - Gerald Magpily
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