While Brexit fears are causing major concerns for many financial actors around Europe, UK groups are still signing major investment deals with international agents. Last weekend UK media investor Ingenious Media signed a $200 million joint venture deal with the Chinese Media group Hejing Culture.
The London based media investment and advisory group which specialises in investment, asset management and corporate finance, has in the past invested in such best-selling films as ‘Avatar’ and ‘Life of Pi’ and more recently the romantic drama ‘Carol’ which was nominated for six Oscars.
Hejing culture is backed by both the Chinese government and private investors. Chinese investors have started investing heavily in the international film industry, with large sums flowing into Hollywood production, since the Chinese Group Guangdong Alpha Group’s great success through their investment in Oscar winning production ‘The Revenant’.
The UK and China agreed to support British-Chinese collaboration on film and television productions with a co-production treaty two years ago. The new joint venture between the Chinese and British group will be investing in both films and television programs and will involve Chinese co-producers. As productions under this structure will classify as Sino-UK co-productions they will see increased shares of box office revenue in the Chinese market, which is set to surpass the US cinema market in revenues, making it the largest in the world, within the next year.
