Giant Will Buy 23% of Barris Industries
Giant Group Ltd., the Beverly Hills-based holding company headed by TV and film producer Burt Sugarman, announced Monday that it has agreed to purchase 2 million shares of Barris Industries Inc. from the company’s chairman, TV game show producer Chuck Barris, for $13 a share.
Giant’s stake will amount to 23% of Barris Industries outstanding shares and will make it the company’s largest shareholder.
Barris, creator of such silly but successful TV game shows as “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game” and “The Gong Show,” will retain 763,000 shares, or 8.6% of the company.
The sale was initiated by Barris, according to Sugarman, who will replace him as chairman of Barris Industries. “Chuck has made a decision to return to creating shows,” Sugarman said in an interview Monday. Barris will remain with the company as a creator and producer of shows in addition to retaining his current membership on the board of directors.
For its $26-million investment, Giant will get “a company with $33 million in cash and no debt,” Sugarman said. He described Barris Industries as “a vertically integrated company that owns its own TV distribution company, travel company and even its own lighting company.”
With the Barris purchase, Sugarman continues a three-year acquisition binge. In 1983, he paid a reported $3 million to acquire 28% of the voting stock of Columbia, S.C.-based Giant Portland & Masonry Cement Co. He later became a major shareholder in Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., the nation’s eighth-largest steel producer. In 1985, he spent $13 million to acquire 27% of New York-based Ply-Gem Industries Inc., a manufacturer of wood paneling and vacuum cleaner bags. Sugarman’s Giant recently hiked its stake in TRE Corp, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of aerospace materials and home products, to 15% from 5%.
Along the way, Sugarman also acquired the film rights to three award-winning plays, “Crimes of the Heart,” “Extremities” and “Children of a Lesser God.” The latter two are now in movie theaters.
