The business organization of YuuZoo announced Friday that it had made a second equity investment in Ryan Kavanugh's Relativity Holdings Media worth at least $15 million and up to $150 million.
The Singapore-based e-commerce company last month acquired a 33.3 percent stake in the 12-year-old company that emerged from bankruptcy in March, as TheWrap exclusively reported.
"We now are very pleased to announce that YuuZoo and Relativity have agreed to a significantly wider and deeper partnership than originally discussed, which has resulted in a massive global content and distribution engine with presence on all the four screens that always have been YuuZoo's vision; the movie screen, the TV screen, the computer screen and the smartphone screen," Thomas Zilliacus, executive chairman of YuuZoo in a statement obtained by TheWrap.
Under the the terms of the deal, Relativity will market the YuuZoo platform in the U.S. as a master franchisee and introduce the company and its products and services to all its domestic and international partners, per Business Times.
In addition, Kavanaugh will join the YuuZoo board and YuuZoo executive chairman Thomas Zilliacus will join Relativity's board.
It can be noted before that last investment designed to bail out Relativity Media appears to be a lot smaller than reported in an initial media account last week - amounting to a minority investment, starting at $27.5 million in cash, rather than an outright sale worth up to $250 million.
Details of the anticipated investment by YuuZoo Corporation, a social media company based in Singapore, were revealed in a filing with the Singapore Stock Exchange.
The six-page document shows that YuuZoo will receive a 33.3% stake in Beverly Hills-based Relativity in exchange for an investment of $50 million. The first $27.5 million of the payment is supposed to be made in cash, while the remaining $22.5 million can be paid in cash or YuuZoo shares, which are currently trading at about 17 cents.
The document filed with Singapore authorities also describes the possibility of an additional $100 million investment by YuuZoo, which could be made within two years. That would give the social media, online commerce, and gaming company majority control of Relativity.
Relativity emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, with founder and CEO Ryan Kavanaugh still in charge, but the company has struggled to find money to pay its creditors and to fund new film productions.
The company's distribution partner, EuropaCorp, reported to shareholders last week that Relativity was in danger of losing its 50% stake in their joint venture after failing to pay its share of the quarterly overhead.
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