Latest news with #AriEmanuel
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
How Hollywood hotshot was real whistleblower in Biden coverup...as his 'Rahm-bo' brother teases White House run
Rahm Emanuel is positioning himself as the future of the Democratic Party. President Barack Obama 's former chief of staff, who was also Joe Biden 's ambassador to Japan, and the mayor of Chicago, has been teasing a presidential bid as of late, while blasting his party as 'woke and weak.' The 65-year-old plans to head to Iowa - traditionally the first state that votes - in September for a fish fry and sat down for an interview this week with The Wall Street Journal. But it was a different Emanuel brother who shouted warnings to party elders during the last election cycle. In Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's blockbuster new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, it is revealed that Rahm's hotshot Hollywood super-agent brother Ari Emanuel screamed at former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain over Biden's condition. It was late September 2023, five months after Biden announced he would run for reelection, and Ari Emanuel had invited members of the president's team to his annual 'Power Players' retreat. 'For months now, Ari Emanuel - CEO of Endeavor, a talent and entertainment company, and a major Democratic donor - hadn't been able to believe what he was watching,' the authors wrote. 'President Joe Biden was quite obviously deteriorating before the nation's eyes, and Democrats seemed to be in complete denial about it,' they continued. 'Emanuel would call governors and encourage them to run. He would talk to his brother, Rahm, a former Obama chief of staff and then an ambassador to Japan. He would with anyone who would listen,' Tapper and Thompson added. Ari Emanuel turned up the volume at the Power Players retreat - yelling his concerns at Klain from the back of the room. 'Joe Biden cannot run for reelection! He needs to drop out! He can't win! What's the plan B?' Tapper and Thompson described. 'Emanuel was flat-out yelling at Klain.' Klain pushed back telling Ari Emanuel that there 'was no plan B' and that Biden, as the sitting president of the United States, got to decide. He added that Biden had already beaten former President Donald Trump, the far-and-away-frontrunner on the GOP side, once. Ari Emanuel was 'incensed,' the authors wrote. 'What the f*** are we doing?' the Hollywood super-agent was described as saying. 'The first party to put a younger candidate before the voters, if we give him enough time, we can win.' He also knew Trump well, having served as the now-president's agent for almost a decade. 'It was wild,' attendee Michael Kives told Tapper and Thompson. 'A public yelling match between them.' Kives recalled that the event was typically a 'civilized affair,' in the years before. 'Eventually, Emanuel came to believe they were all lying about Biden's health. "We're seeing it!" he would shout. "It's called age! It happens!"' the book continued. 'Everyone around the president - worst of all, Jill - was lying, Emanuel would say.' 'Jill and Hunter and Jeffrey Katzenberg and Ron f***ing Klain. And the president had lied, too, when he said he would be a bridge,' Emanuel's gripes continued. In an interview with Red Letter's Tara Palmeri last month, Rahm Emanuel said he warned Democrats about Biden's chances of success in a reelection fight but was cagey on details. 'I can't give you the hour and the day that I said it, but I expressed myself,' he said. 'A year in, two years in, was not the timeframe. I don't have the exact date and I'm not going to sit here and guess it but I expressed myself to individuals that were important.' 'I let people know that could have an an influence on that decision,' he continued, refusing to divulge much more. 'I don't try to expose private conversations.' In his Wall Street Journal this week, Rahm Emanuel positioned himself as a Democrat who could take the wheel of the party next. 'I'm tired of sitting in the back seat when somebody's gunning it at 90 miles an hour for a cliff,' he said. He criticized his longtime party as being 'toxic' as well as ' woke and weak.' 'If you want the country to give you the keys to the car, somebody's got to be articulating an agenda that's fighting for America, not just fighting Trump,' he continued. 'The American dream has become unaffordable. It's inaccessible. And that has to be unacceptable to us.'
Business of Fashion
02-05-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
Ari Emanuel's Milestone Frieze Acquisition, Explained
The entertainment conglomerate Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. ended six months of art industry speculation Thursday when it announced it had agreed a deal to sell Frieze, one of the world's top global art fair and media brands, to a new live and experiential events company led by Ari Emanuel. Emanuel, the former chief executive and co-founder of Endeavor, said in a statement that Frieze 'represents a strategic cornerstone' in his as-yet-unnamed firm, backed by asset managers Apollo Global Management and RedBird Capital Partners. Although the terms of the transaction were undisclosed, the deal values Frieze at nearly $200 million, according to a report in the Financial Times citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The question now becomes: what does the acquisition mean for Frieze, Emanuel's new venture and the future of the art business against the backdrop of a struggling market and an uncertain global economy? BoF deciphers the deal and its ripple effects. Why is Endeavor selling Frieze? The move is an offshoot of a much bigger transaction. Endeavor agreed to be acquired in a take-private deal with the private equity colossus Silver Lake Management in March 2024. That pact, which closed less than two months ago, placed a $25 billion total enterprise valuation on Endeavor and its holdings, making it the largest such transaction ever completed in the media and entertainment sector, according to the parties involved. ADVERTISEMENT Yet not every asset in Endeavor's portfolio fit Silver Lake's plans. Endeavor announced in October 2024 that it was exploring a potential sale of select properties from its live events holdings, including Frieze and the Miami Open and Madrid Open tennis tournaments. This is not to say that Silver Lake wanted Endeavor completely out of the live-events sector. One of the latter's most tantalising assets was its controlling stake in TKO Group Holdings, Inc, the publicly traded sports and entertainment company built around the Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment. The success of those events has translated to a $32.3 billion market cap for TKO, of which Silver Lake (via Endeavor) owns 51 percent. Still, if the UFC and WWE are the templates for the types of live events Silver Lake believes will continue to drive returns, it's obvious why a pair of tennis tournaments, let alone an art fair and media brand, might be considered expendable. Does the deal align with industry expectations? The acquisition has already surprised industry insiders in two ways, even considering how little is currently known of the terms. A Frieze spokesperson confirmed to BoF that the sale to Emanuel's company only involves Frieze, encompassing the brand's seven annual art fairs on three continents; No. 9 Cork Street, its gallery premises in London where dealers and non-profit art entities can rent temporary exhibition space; and the eponymous flagship publication with which the company started. Barring any later changes, however, this structure differs from Endeavor's original plan to solicit bids for Frieze and the Miami and Madrid Opens as a package. In November, Bloomberg cited sources with direct knowledge to report that 'several parties [had] already expressed interest in all three assets.' The apparent decision to peel off Frieze into a standalone transaction suggests Endeavor and its advisors altered their strategy after getting a clearer sense of the market during the closed auction process. The second surprise is the reported valuation of almost $200 million. Within the art trade last autumn, the most persistent financial rumour about a Frieze sale was that Endeavor was seeking $80 million, a price several art professionals considered too ambitious. That Emanuel's firm is said to have paid almost two and a half times that amount is a stunning development. At the same time, since Frieze's business performance was generally subsumed into the larger accounting for all live-event properties in Endeavor's public regulatory filings, few outside those companies ever had access to the full array of metrics typically used in setting valuations. Why is Emanuel's company buying Frieze? The famed Hollywood dealmaker said in a statement that Frieze 'has always been a source of inspiration for [him] — both professionally and personally.' Almost a decade of evidence backs up his rhetoric, including tens of millions more dollars spent prior to this latest transaction. ADVERTISEMENT It was during Emanuel's tenure as chief executive that Endeavor acquired a 70 percent stake in Denmark Street Limited, Frieze's holding company, in April 2016; oversaw the founding of Frieze Los Angeles in 2019 and Frieze Seoul in 2022; bought out the brand's co-founders, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover for a reported $16.5 million in May 2023; and struck deals to add two more regional art fairs, Expo Chicago and New York's Armory Show, under the Frieze banner just two months later. A regulatory filing by the Vornado Realty Trust, the Armory Show's previous owner, shows that Frieze paid $24.4 million for that fair. Emanuel, a longtime evangelist for the value of live events in an increasingly digital world, may be motivated by a belief that no other company like Frieze is likely to become available. The only moderately comparable asset is its chief rival Art Basel, which stages lavishly produced art fairs for hundreds of galleries in its namesake Swiss city, Miami Beach, Hong Kong and Paris each year while also operating an editorial platform, a growing portfolio of technology products and a live-events consultancy, among other ventures. But the two companies also differ substantially in their geographical spread, long-term assets (such as real estate, equipment and technology), liabilities and other factors, making it unreliable to model the value of Frieze after the value of Art Basel (and vice versa). Regardless, Art Basel's parent company, MCH Group, completed a deal making Lupa Systems, the investment vehicle of the media scion James Murdoch its largest shareholder in 2020. Together, Lupa Systems and the canton of Basel-Stadt controlled around 76 percent of MCH Group's equity as of 2023, effectively making the company and its subsidiaries takeover-proof. In this context, it may be somewhat less surprising that Emanuel would pay what many in the art trade perceive as a sizeable premium to regain control of Frieze. Similar to the old adage about the wisdom of investing in land, they simply aren't making companies like this anymore. (That said, it seems fair to wonder whether he could have negotiated a more favourable price had he waited longer in an economy growing less seller-friendly by the day.) What does the sale mean for Frieze? Little is set to change at the company for now. Frieze's leadership team, headed by chief executive Simon Fox, will remain in place, according to Endeavor's announcement of the sale. Beyond ensuring continuity, the decision is also true to history; Fox was appointed to his current position on Emanuel's watch in 2020, and the two appeared to work together harmoniously for the roughly half-decade preceding Silver Lake's acquisition of Endeavor. 'Financially, we are insignificant to Endeavor overall,' Fox said of Frieze in a 2024 Vanity Fair interview. 'We are taken very seriously by Ari and the team, disproportionately to our financial contribution.' That Emanuel so vigorously supported Frieze before, despite the latter's apparent inability to post big profits, suggests he will be inclined to take a similarly long-term approach again. What are the implications for the wider art industry? The art fair sector has been under mounting pressure since before the Covid-19 pandemic, as dealers continue to grapple with spiralling costs to show at these events and, in many cases, diminishing returns from doing so. The latest edition of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report found that art-fair expenses ranked in the top three concerns among surveyed dealers and that their share of sales made at fairs declined from 42 percent in 2019 to 31 percent in 2024. The news that Endeavor was trying to offload Frieze fuelled speculation among some art insiders that the brand might be next in line for a culling. The co-founders were gone. The wider economic climate was dour. Emanuel, its in-house champion, was headed for the exits. (He stepped down as chief executive of Endeavor to become the executive chairman of WME, its talent agency, once the take-private deal with Silver Lake was finalised.) Perhaps Frieze would be sold off for parts or simply shuttered if no buyer emerged with an enticing offer quickly enough. ADVERTISEMENT The sale to Emanuel and his well-capitalised firm neutralises these concerns, at least temporarily. Against the backdrop of the art market's struggles, the odds have increased that the fair sector continues consolidating, with Frieze and Art Basel its international anchors. Still, it would be naive to expect Emanuel, one of the most insatiable entrepreneurs of the past 50 years, to allow his new asset to simply stand pat until lower-level competition falls away over time. Maybe his financing and relentlessness will enable Frieze to roll up more regional fairs, or to secure venues that will allow the brand to scale up its smallest events (Frieze New York, which opens to VIPs at The Shed on 7 May, is at capacity with fewer than 70 exhibitors this year) or to find lucrative synergies with other experiential properties yet to be acquired. Emanuel said in yesterday's statement that Frieze is 'positioned for further growth.' Even if the specific strategies for achieving this remain mysterious right now, his general ambitions are openly on the table.
Business of Fashion
01-05-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
Ari Emanuel Acquires Frieze Art Group From Endeavor
Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel agreed to buy Frieze, one of the world's most influential contemporary art organisations, from Endeavor Group Holdings Inc., marking the first purchase by his new global events company. 'Frieze has always been a source of inspiration for me — both professionally and personally,' Emanuel said in a statement on Thursday. 'Frieze is well positioned for further growth and represents a strategic cornerstone in our new global events platform.' Frieze chief executive officer Simon Fox will remain in his current role, the company said. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The Financial Times reported that the transaction would value Frieze at nearly $200 million. A representative for the company declined to comment. Emanuel, the former chief executive officer and co-founder of Endeavor, stepped down after the company was taken private in a $25 billion deal with Silver Lake Management that was completed in March. He remains executive chairman of WME Group, Endeavor's Hollywood talent agency, and has created his own new company backed by investors including alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management Inc. to buy experiences and events. The consortium has also been eying Endeavor's tennis assets including the Miami Open and the Madrid Open, Bloomberg has reported. The Frieze purchase comes a week before the art fair Frieze New York opens to VIPs. Frieze has seven art fairs around the globe, ranging from Seoul to London to Los Angeles. It also has a media arm, which publishes a magazine. By James Tarmy
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Endeavor sells arts organization Frieze to Ari Emanuel
Beverly Hills sports and entertainment company Endeavor is selling contemporary art organization Frieze to a new events and experiences company launched by superagent and Endeavor founder Ari Emanuel. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, was valued at roughly $200 million, according to the Financial Times. 'Frieze has always been a source of inspiration for me — both professionally and personally,' Emanuel said in a statement. 'Having worked with the team for nearly a decade, I've seen firsthand the strength of their community and the ambition driving their mission to expand the reach and understanding of contemporary art. Frieze is well positioned for further growth and represents a strategic cornerstone in our new global events platform.' Emanuel was previously Endeavor's chief executive and became executive chairman of Endeavor's WME Group earlier this year after the company was taken private by private equity backer Silver Lake. Endeavor acquired Frieze in 2016. In 2023, Endeavor purchased the remaining 30% ownership for $16.5 million, according to company filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. London-based Frieze was founded in 1991 by Amanda Sharp, Matthew Slotover and Tom Gidley with the launch of Frieze magazine, which covered contemporary art and culture. Frieze, which also has editorial and digital platforms, holds art fairs in locations including Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York and Seoul. The organization has more than 150 employees. CEO Simon Fox and the existing leadership team will continue to oversee Frieze, Endeavor said. When Endeavor built its massive media empire as it headed toward becoming a public company in 2021, Emanuel pulled together varied entertainment assets under one umbrella, including sports leagues and businesses involved in marketing, licensing and unscripted content. But some investors were skeptical of that strategy and Endeavor has since sold some of those parts, including a move to combine UFC with WWE in a separate publicly traded firm called TKO. Endeavor went private in March. 'Endeavor is streamlining away from the big 'flywheel' they pitched during their time as a public company,' said Brandon Ross, a partner and media and technology analyst at LightShed Partners. 'Ari's personal interests and ambitions remain larger than new Endeavor.'
New York Times
01-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Frieze, Premiere Art Fair Company, Sold on Eve of New York's Art Week
After much speculation about who would purchase Frieze, one of the world's premiere art fairs, it turned out that the call was coming from inside the house. Ari Emanuel, 64, the former chief executive behind the sports and entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, which currently owns the Frieze fair and its signature magazine, announced on Thursday that he was setting up a new company, as yet unnamed, to purchase Frieze. Endeavor recently announced a similar deal for its basketball representation business — all part of the complicated hurdles to completing a take-private deal with the investment company Silver Lake, a longtime financial backer of Endeavor. At its acquisition, Endeavor, including its debt, was valued at $13 billion in April 2024. (Endeavor was taken private this past March.) 'Frieze has always been a source of inspiration for me — both professionally and personally,' Emanuel, who currently holds the title of executive chairman at WME Group, said in a statement. 'Having worked with the team for nearly a decade, I've seen firsthand the strength of their community and the ambition driving their mission to expand the reach and understanding of contemporary art.' The announcement comes just a week before the company's flagship event, Frieze New York, returns to The Shed with nearly 70 participating galleries. The show draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, including ultrawealthy collectors who might spend upward of $1 million on a single painting there. Despite changes in the company's structure, the Frieze leadership team will stay intact, including its chief executive, Simon Fox, according to a spokeswoman. She said the deal also included Frieze's magazine and retinue of seven international fairs, including EXPO Chicago, the Armory Show in New York, Frieze Los Angeles and Frieze Seoul. Given the downturn in the art market, which has experienced a 12 percent year-on-year decline in global sales, some industry experts had worried that Frieze's sale to an outside buyer could have disastrous implications for the business. Some gallerists are now breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that Emanuel has a long history with Frieze; his company first purchased a stake in Frieze nine years ago before gaining full ownership in 2023. 'This is a stabilizing buyer,' said Alexander Gray, a Manhattan gallerist who also sits on the selection committee for Frieze London. 'The model of the art fair is one that some disrupters might think is disruptable, but this is not the market climate for any disruption.'
