Saturday, April 21st, 2007 - 3:00PM Sony Lot, Culver City
* Click here to RSVP
Adrian Ward, the new Vice President of the Entertainment, Sports & Media Group at the Israel Discount Bank of New York (IDB Bank), will conduct a workshop on Securing Film Financing and Current Trends. Adrian is a veteran of the film financing world, having entered the industry in 1991. He was involved in the development and structuring of the first ever bank gap transactions. In 1998, he re-located to London, U.K. as European Representative for Imperial Capital Bank Entertainment Finance (https://www.icbef.com) specializing in packaging multi-party loan transactions involving many of the available European tax incentives. He returned to Los Angeles in January 2005 to oversee credit management for the entire entertainment portfolio. And he recently left Imperial Bank to head up the new entertainment financing division of the Israeli Discount Bank. The workshop will start with an overview of the film financing process, and they key steps necessary to secure financing from investors and larger institutions. Then we will move through an overview of the international tax credit scene, with a particular focus on the U.S. and Canada, since international locations are becoming less attractive due to the low dollar and long distances. We'll touch on a few trends including the affect of the Internet on film financing and the large amount of hedge funds playing in town. Then we'll open it up to Q&A. This will be an intimate and relaxed session, and we will dedicate plenty of time to Q&A so everyone can get their questions answered.