Bailout

Annie Leibovitz?s new creditors

By Felix Salmon

Well done to Annie Leibovitz, who has managed to extricate herself from her unpleasant embrace with the aggressive and litigious Art Capital Group. Her new sole creditor — and we can only guess at how much the principal amount she owes has risen to at this point — is Colony Capital, the $30 billion private-equity shop which normally has its eye on much bigger deals.

Chances are that Colony is not going to find Leibovitz particularly easy to work with: no one else ever has. But they’re also unlikely to start foreclosing on her assets in the way that Art Capital is prone to do. Technically, this is a debt deal: Colony has bought Art Capital’s loan. But my guess is that Colony is looking at it more like an equity deal: they expect to work with Leibovitz to start generating an income stream for both of them which is going to last more or less indefinitely.

So fingers crossed on this one — but it certainly seems as though Leibovitz had much better advice this time round than she did when she was put into the Art Capital deal initially. Here’s hoping it works out.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).