Investment: Newest Life of Leo the Lion

For more than two years, New Jersey Real Estate Tycoon Philip J. Levin, 58, tried to topple the management of one of the biggest U.S. movie companies, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. He spent $11,480,000 for MGM stock, eventually bought or controlled 720,000 shares, or 14.3% of the total. He put out at least $800,000 to finance two bitter but unsuccessful proxy fights.

Last week Levin headed toward the nearest exit. “I was in the position,” he explained, “where I could only move sideways or backwards.” Therefore, he and his associates sold their 720,000 shares of MGM. Of that total, 420,000 were bought at $59 a share by the youthful (38) president of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ltd., Edgar M. Bronfman, in a personal transaction. The remaining 300,000 shares were acquired, at the same price, by Time Inc.

Levin’s point in his proxy battles was that the management of MGM under President Robert H. O’Brien had been lax. As he saw it, the company that has Leo the Lion as its emblem too often roared, then sat down. Actually, Levin lost the proxy fights because most stockholders agreed that Leo had become more and more leonine.

From a 1963 deficit of $32 million

O’Brien brought the company back to profits so far this year of $9,728,000, the highest earnings figure since 1959. MGM has sparingly sold off its film library to television, still has 1,200 films in the vault, including Gone With the Wind, for which the company turned down a $10 million TV offer and which it is about to release for a seventh round of movie-house showings. Meanwhile, MGM has negotiated a $52,800,000 deal with CBS-TV to make new feature-length films, is successful at the box office with its big-screen spectaculars, including Dr. Zhivago and the high-grossing The Dirty Dozen.

One stockholder who disagreed with Levin was Edgar Bronfman, who bought into MGM and then sold off his holdings in 1966 on a misplaced hunch that if Levin’s proxy battles failed, the stock would settle down in price. After the last proxy fight, Bronfman began to buy back in. He had acquired over 400,000 shares when he was approached this summer by Levin, who wanted to buy Bronfman’s stock or get his aid in another proxy fight. When Bronfman refused both propositions, Levin decided to sell. He will make a pre-tax profit of more than $19 million. For its part, Time Inc. acted independently of Bronfman, bought the stock strictly as an investment. President James A. Linen described the purchase as an opportunity to enter “the rapidly developing technology of the moving image, as well as television programming and the music and record industries in which MGM has important interests.”