N.Y. Investors Buy Hollywood Video Business : AME is Industry’s Biggest Post-Production House

A group headed by New York investor Lawrence J. Berkowitz said Wednesday that it has agreed to buy AME Inc., a Burbank company that is Hollywood’s largest videotape post-production house, for nearly $100 million.

The Berkowitz group, through a company called AME Holding Co., will pay $57 million for AME’s 4.9 million shares and will assume about $42 million in AME debt that will be refinanced.

Berkowitz emerged as a suitor for AME after Andrew M. McIntyre, AME’s founder and chief executive, dropped a $37-million bid in February to buy the 56% of AME he did not already own. McIntyre cited his inability to finance the offer on terms he wanted.

The Berkowitz group will buy AME’s stock in two parts. McIntyre’s 44% stake is to be bought for $10 a share, or $22 million, under an option McIntyre granted the group in April. The remaining shares are to be bought for $12.50 a share, or nearly $35 million. AME’s stock closed Wednesday at $11.50 a share in over-the-counter trading, up $1.

First National Bank of Boston, Citicorp Capital Investors Ltd. and members of the investor group will provide financing for the transaction.

Berkowitz said he will serve as chairman and chief executive of AME but added that he plans to regularly consult McIntyre. Berkowitz added that two former AME executives who resigned this year, president and chief operating officer Larry Kingen and chief financial officer Martin Katz, have agreed to rejoin the company.

Berkowitz, 48, is the former chief executive of IDC Services, a company specializing in payroll and casting services for the entertainment and advertising businesses. He left IDC in early 1988 after the company was sold and has been a private investor and consultant in New York since then.

McIntyre started AME in 1980 and quickly built it into one of the major providers of videotape services in the entertainment business, performing such tasks as transferring movies and television shows from film to videotape. It is uncertain what McIntyre plans to do; he could not be reached for comment.

In the year ended last Sept. 30, AME earned $3.2 million on revenue of $47.6 million.