China-controlled AMC to buy Odeon & UCI Cinemas for $1.2bn

AMC Entertainment, the US cinema chain majority owned by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group, is to buy Europe’s biggest movie screen operator Odeon & UCI Cinemas from Guy Hands’s Terra Firma in a deal worth around £921m ($1.2bn).

The move, which will make make AMC the world’s largest movie theatre operator, will see AMC take on £407m ($536m) of debt as part of the deal.

Odeon and UCI, which has 242 theatres and 2,236 screens, will continue to be based in London and will operate as a subsidiary of AMC.

A combination of AMC and Odeon & UCI’s theatres will give AMC a total of 627 theatres and more than 7,600 screens in eight countries.

The timing of the acquisition coincides with a post-Brexit fall in the pound, a factor that likely stimulated the closure of the long-discussed deal.

AMC is also looking to close its $1.1bn acquisition of US exhibitor Carmike Cinemas but that the transaction is reportedly at “considerable risk” after the chain adjourned a shareholder vote on the deal last month.