China Media Capital Raises $950 Million for Third Dollar Fund
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Li Ruigang’s China Media Capital has raised $950 million for CMC Capital Partners III, its third U.S. dollar-denominated investment fund.
Documents filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the Cayman Island-registered fund raised $153.5 million from U.S.-based investors, in an issue managed by Credit Suisse.
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The same documents explained that they did not cover $799.3 million additionally raised from non-U.S. investors. CMC did not reply to Variety’s request for comment.
CMC, which was launched in 2010 and became one of China’s first specialized media investment groups, now operates two RMB funds and three USD funds. Its second dollar fund sold $182 million to U.S. investors, and $366 million to non-U.S. investors, according to Dealstreet Asia.
Li, a former head of Shanghai Media Group, is one of the best-connected Chinese executives in Hollywood and Beijing political circles. He has leveraged that influence to attempt to build a media empire that stretches from movie production to smart TV hardware. Alibaba, Tencent and real estate major China Vanke, are among its shareholders.
With Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks, CMC formed a China-based animation joint venture Oriental Dreamworks. With Warner Bros, CMC launched a film production venture Flagship Entertainment. But both struggled. In 2018, Oriental Dreamworks became a wholly CMC-owned property, renamed Pearl Studio, which last year released “Abominable.”
In the U.S. CMC remains a minority shareholder of Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency, and it has a holding in Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.
In Asia, CMC has a key stake in Hong Kong’s leading free-to-air broadcaster TVB and the Shaw Brothers film studio. It was recently announced that CMC would be selling its stake in Beijing-based BaseFX, which is being taken over by Sunac Culture.
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