Getty Images Sold To Private Equity Firm

photographers.jpgBecause of our sick obsession with images of celebrities, it's one of the fastest growing categories in the visual content business. Getty Images, the world’s leading creator and distributor of visual content and other digital media including so many glitzy Hollywood photos, announced today that it has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC for $2.4 billion. Getty Images stockholders will receive $34 in getty-images-logo.gifcash for each outstanding share of common stock they own, or a premium of 55% over the closing price on January 18. The Board of Directors of Getty Images has approved. Completion of the transaction is subject to shareholder approval. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2008. Interestingly, almost a year ago to the day, Getty Images purchased WireImage, one of the leading creators of entertainment and event imagery, for approximately $200 million in cash.

Getty Images Growing Showbiz Photo Biz

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2 Comments »

  1. Great. The only business in American that’s growing.

    Comment by mla28 — February 25, 2008 @ 6:39 pm

  2. Too bad the photographers who created the images licensed by Getty won’t be getting $34 in cash for each visual. In the days when I was a full-time shooter, photographers got 50% of the fee for each image licensed by their stock agencies. Getty and Corbis led the way in changing photographers’ identities to suppliers, slashing the share of license fee to about an 18% net for the image creator, and undercutting the market so badly that photographers can no longer count on stock images to establish a retirement fund. I expect that photographers will find their images used by Hellman subsidiaries and affiliates with no payment to themselves because of language buried in the Getty contract. There is no small part of me that wants to say “told you so” to all the people who ignored my advice to “just say no” to an onerous contract.

    Comment by M.C. Valada — February 27, 2008 @ 11:26 am

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