Haim Saban
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Haim Saban (1944 - ), a television and media mogul, is owner of Saban Capital Group and is the former co-owner of Fox Family Worldwide. With an estimated current net worth of around $2.8 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 98-richest person in America.
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[edit] History
Born in Alexandria, Egypt to a modest Jewish family in 1944, Saban fled persecution in Egypt and claims to have arrived penniless in Israel in 1966, then to France around 1973, and eventually to the United States in 1983. He currently resides in Beverly Hills, California. Saban has 4 children with his wife, Cheryl.
[edit] Career
Saban started his career as a concert organizer but he stopped due to a commercial failure in 1973 and moved to France. There, he actively participated to the introduction of Japanese anime and sentai TV series in the country, since 1978, by producing the score and opening theme song for the first adaptations, UFO Robot Grendizer, Candy Candy and many others who became instant hits in the local charts. He also did the same work on early imported series from America such as Starsky & Hutch or Dallas.
After spending ten years in France, and gathering $500 000, he moved to the United States where he became a television producer perhaps most notable for the adaptations of Power Rangers, Masked Rider, VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs. In 2003 he headed the $5.7 billion purchase of Kirch Media Group, the then-bankrupt German media conglomerate.
In 2001, he and News Corporation sold Fox Family Worldwide for $3.2 billion to The Walt Disney Company for ABC -- the network was renamed ABC Family Channel. Saban made about $1.6 billion from this sale, making it the largest transaction between a company and a private citizen ever.
With a net worth of $2.8 billion dollars in 2005, Saban was ranked the 78th richest man in the world by Forbes magazine.
In June of 2006, he was part of an investor group led by Texas Pacific Group of Fort Worth, Texas and Thomas H. Lee Partners that won the bid for Univisión (NYSE: UVN), the largest Spanish-language media company in the United States. The bid was for $12.7 billion (USD). The network made popular generally because of programs from Mexico-based Televisa (NYSE: TV, BMV: TLEVISA) and Venezuela-based Venevision -- it is not known at this time if he will conduct any changes to the network (in terms of staff and/or programming). The acquisition may not be complete until sometime in 2007. However, recently company shareholders have filed a lawsuit over the handling of the deal. [1]
[edit] Politics
Today, Saban's political affiliations are generally center; he has donated to the US Democratic Party and the Israeli Labor Party, he has also donated to Republicans including George W. Bush and has business affiliations with the decidedly right-of-center fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch. In the 2001-2002 election cycle, his Saban Capital group donated over 10 million dollars to the Democratic National Committee[2], the largest donation from a single source up to that time.
Saban joined Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg in endorsing the re-election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican Governor of California, on August 7, 2006.
