07:24 PST 3/12/2021
by
Georg Szalai
,
The Chinese conglomerate had a 9.8 percent stake in the exhibition giant on March 3.
It’s official: the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group has given up its majority stake in the film series AMC Entertainment and done business as AMC Theaters.
AMC said in its annual report, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, that Wanda reduced its stake to 23.08 percent of the outstanding common stock and 47.37 percent of the combined voting power of common stock on December 31. reduce its ownership to bring its economic and voting interest to 9.8 percent from March 3rd.
On February 1, 2021, Wanda exercised the right to convert its Class B ordinary shares, of which each share had three votes, to ordinary Class A ordinary shares, which have one vote per share.
“Even after the conversion, Wanda could have a significant impact on our corporate governance and business, due to their representation on the board and their 9.8 percent shareholding on March 3, 2021, based on our records and information from Wanda,” Friday regulatory filing said.
Previous regulatory filing has shown that Wanda owns approximately 58.8 percent of the voting power of AMC’s share, despite having less than a 50 percent economic stake in the company. In a June submission, AMC stated that Wanda at the time owned 51,769,784 Class B shares and no Class A shares.
Wanda has had a controlling stake in AMC since 2012 when it bought majority control of the exhibit giant for $ 2.6 billion, at the time the largest international acquisition ever by a private Chinese company. The Beijing-based firm increased its stake in AMC in 2018 through a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake, but through the dual-share structure, it retained control of the theater chain.