- Insider’s Banker of the Week series is featured in the weekday newsletter, 10 Things on Wall Street.
- This week, we highlight Kasper Knokgaard, who just completed an investment in EQT at entertainment company United Talent Agency.
- This is Knokgaard’s second major investment in the motion picture industry, following EQT’s acquisition of Cast & Crew.
Kasper Knokgaard has been conducting entertainment industry due diligence for years. In 2018, the private equity firm EQT, in which Knokgaard is a partner, acquired Cast & Crew, a film and television production payroll company.
Knokgaard said the Cast & Crew acquisition would give EQT insight into what content is being produced, from TV shows to blockbuster movies, and to some extent could be the private equity firm’s next move into the entertainment industry. said it was able to shed light on the investment of Last month, EQT purchased her Investcorp stake in United Talent Agency, a Hollywood giant representing stars like Angelina Jolie and Benedict Cumberbatch.
“The advantage of having a cast and crew is that you can see what they are producing. Global head Knokgaard told Insider.
In fact, the entertainment industry has exploded as the pandemic pushed people to consume TV and movies from home, through numerous streaming services led by start-ups such as Netflix and heavily funded entities such as Disney and Amazon. Since I started consuming it, it has changed significantly.
Through their exposure to Cast & Crew and their internal track on production and spending, Knokgaard is convinced that talent is at the heart of what these studios strive to do to ensure they produce the best content. Consumers’ insatiable appetite for fresh content, from professional sports to reality shows, was a further justification for investing in UTA.
“We have more options, more competitive offers, more ways to consume entertainment, whether it’s TVs, mobile phones or iPads,” said Knokgaard. “There are so many different types of content being produced today that we need talent to fill them all.”
The globalization of the entertainment space was another factor that made Knokgaard want UTA. Netflix has had success with Israeli shows such as ‘Fawda’ and the Korean hit ‘The Squid Game’.
“Once you have the talent, you have to navigate this global system, so you need a big agency with the scale and the network and the power,” he said.
EQT, with approximately $79 billion in assets under management, invested in UTA through the EQT X Fund. It is currently the largest outside shareholder of the talent agency.
Jeremy Zimmer co-founded UTA in 1991 and remains the company’s CEO to this day.
Knokgaard joined EQT in 2007 and has completed assignments in offices in Copenhagen, New York and Munich.
The Banker of the Week series is featured in Insider’s 10 Things on Wall Street — Sign up here to receive our newsletter every weekday morning.
Comments
Post a Comment