Acquisitions
Design Pics Inc., based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada has assumed the interim management of Masterfile during the bankruptcy process. Masterfile first filed to restructure its business in
April 2017 and was unable to make any royalty payments to photographers after
January 2018. According to information supplied to creditors by Harris & Partners, the insolvency trustee, as of March 3, 2020 Masterfile had total assets of $270,000 and total liabilities of
$4,092,654.41. They owe royalty payments for the images they licensed to 530 stock agencies and independent photo creators.
Alamy has been acquired by
PA Media Group a UK-based news and information business. Founded 20 years ago, Alamy has one of the world’s most diverse creative and editorial stock imagery collections, comprising almost 200 million photographs, vectors and 360-degree panoramic images sourced from a network of over 100,000 photographers and 650 picture agencies and archives. . The business has close to 100,000 customers in more than 150 countries, working across a range of sectors including publishing, design, advertising and broadcast.
Alamy may be the fifth largest company in the in the stock photo industry (after Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and iStock) and has been doing reasonably well in a very sick industry. Alamy’s latest reported sales figures are for 2018 and can be found on the
Companies House website. on October 17, 2019. This report was recorded on October 17, 2019 and shows that Alamy had gross annual sales of £22.7 million ($29,305,500 ).
Envato, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, has solidified its place as one of the key players in the stock photography market with the acquisition of stock photo subscription service
Twenty20. The Los Angeles-based company that started out as
a way for people to print Instagram photos onto canvas, boasts more than 350,000 creative contributors to its library of more than 45 million authentic, crowd-sourced photos.
On April 1, 2019,
StockFood GmbH will take over the German travel photo agency Look. All employees, including their long-standing customer advisors and photo editors, will join the StockFood team. For decades, Look (
lookphotos.com) has been known as the leading German travel photo agency. From the very beginning, the name "Look" has been synonymous with the group's mission.
Kodak, now going by the name of
Kodak Alaris. has announced the sale of its PPF (Paper, Photochemicals and Film) unit as soon as March 2019. Just last month they promised to re-introduce
Ektachrome in 120 and sheet film later this year, but this week it was reported that they will be selling the company.
Paris based photo agency
ABACAPRESS and German
ddp group, each a leading press
photo agency in their country, will join forces to increase photo production for their
core business, and to develop innovative services for new markets and corporate
brands.
Aurora Photos has been sold to
Cavan Images. The official transition date is Feb 1, 2019. Aurora was founded in 1993 as an agency specializing in offering images related to Outdoor Adventure, Healthy and Active Lifestyles, Nature’s Beauty and remote travel to adventure destinations.
Koch Equity Development is expected to make a $500 million, non-controlling investment in Getty Images. Getty says the equity investment is expected to close by the end of this year.
Action Press, one of Germany's leading press photo agencies based in Hamburg since 1970, is again independent and privately owned. Ulli Michel, longtime managing director, used the management buy-out option and bought action press out of the
SilverHub UK bankruptcy estate.
The Getty family is acquiring all of the Carlyle Groups 51% equity stake in Getty Images for about $250 million and rolling over about $2.35 billion of outstanding debt. The deal gives Getty Images an enterprise value of under $3 billion compared to $3.3 billion in 2012 when Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Getty. At that time Carlyle invested about $500 million in the company. It is believed that the Getty family has ended up owning a significant portion of the debt.
Blend Images photographers have been notified that
Tetra Images has acquired the Contributor Contracts, Distribution agreements and the Blend trademark. Tetra has securely obtained all banking data from Blend and will be mailing the first pdf royalty statements for August sales by email at the end of September. Payment for August sales will be made October 1, 2018. Blend has invoiced all licenses through July 2018 and will be paying out royalties until October, or presumably until all the licenses have been collected.
From the 1940s through the 80s and 90s
Globe Photos, Inc. was widely regarded by newspapers and magazines as a leading source for celebrity images. As other competitors entered the market Globe’s popularity faded, but they still have photographers covering red carpet events on a daily basis in Hollywood and New York. In recent years Globe Photos was one of 12 archives acquired by
Capital Art, Inc., the world’s largest pop culture and image licensing company with more than 15 million images of every movie and entertainment celebrity of the 20th century.
On Saturday
Visual China Group (VCG) shut down
500px Marketplace and replaced it with a distribution partnership arrangement. China users will be able to license the images through VCG who
acquired 500px earlier this year. Getty Images will handle all licensing in the rest of the world.
Bridgeman has announced the acquisition of
Lebrecht Photo Library, the world’s largest image bank for music and related arts, with a collection of over 400,000 specialist images. Lebrecht is the world's most comprehensive image bank for every kind of music ever created - classical music, jazz, opera, rock music, musical instruments, notation, Broadway musicals, dance and ballet. It also has an extensive archive for literature and historical personalities.
Image Source has announced a new strategic partnership with high end brand, Luxy Images to deliver a bespoke (customized) image service direct to clients in Europe at
www.imagesource.com.
Now that 500px has been
sold to VCG it appears that the 500px Marketplace is in transition. Major contributors to Marketplace are receiving notices that their agreements will be terminated effective June 27, 2018. It is not clear that Marketplace will cease all licensing of imagery at that time, but that appears to be the case.
Visual China Group (VCG) announced on Monday, February 26th that it has acquired 100% of 500PX, INC. (
500px) shares through its wholly-owned subsidiary, VCG Hong Kong LTD.
500px is one of the leading online visual creative communities in the world, founded in 2009 and based in Toronto, Canada. With more than 13 million professional and hobbyist photographers from over 195 countries and regions, the 500px community has produced over 120 million unique images diversity and creative trend. 500px is renowned globally for its community, image licensing, and custom photography.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that on January 4, 2018, the Company invested $15.0 million in convertible preferred shares issued by Zcool Network Technology Limited ("Zcoolto”). Zcool's primary business is the operation of an e-commerce platform in China whereby customers can pay to license content contributed by creative professionals. The platform has nearly six million registered users. Zcool has been the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock creative content in China since 2014.
As of January 31st Anthony Harris has stepped down as CEO of Image Source and Christina Vaughan has returned to the CEO position. In 2015 Christina turned over her leadership of Image Source to Mr. Harris, but remained a small shareholder. She moved to the position of CEO at
CueSongs, and oversaw the initial deployment and beta testing of the new CuePro platform, which won the Technology Strategy Board competition in 2014 and received a substantial grant to develop its “Frictionless Music Licensing for Online Broadcast”.
IPA,
Independent Photo Agency, one of the most important Italian photo agencies, has announced the acquisition of
Photofoyer, which specializes in interior design and architecture photography. The purpose of the acquisition is to start a strategic project for the expansion of IPA’s creative sector, increasing its operations both at the European and extra-European context.
The
TT News Agency in Sweden has acquired
IBL. Since its inception in the 1960s IBL has enjoyed a solid market position, in Sweden as well as internationally. Daily newspapers, weekly press, magazines and book publishers are the company’s main clients.
Shutterstock, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Flashstock Technology, Inc., a Toronto based company that enables the efficient creation of custom visual content through its proprietary platform, for approximately $50 million cash. Flashstock has a fast growing customer base of enterprise marketers seeking on-brand content to feed the ever growing visual demands of multiple marketing channels. By integrating Flashstock into its product offerings, Shutterstock will be able to offer a high-quality custom content product to its 1.7 million customers. The transaction is expected to close in July 2017.
PIXTA Inc. in Japan has acquired 80% of the outstanding stock of Topic Images Inc. of Korea from its parent companies, NEWSIS Co., Ltd. and NEWS1 Co., Ltd. for 130 million JPY ($1,164,780). The transaction took place on Feb 24, 2017. Topic has been selling high-priced stock images mainly in Korea, producing many of them by itself. Topic is now a subsidiary of PIXTA and will receive PIXTA’s strong support for its business operation. However, Topic is continuously conducting its own business as an existing company.
Visual China Group the company that
acquired Corbis in January 2016 has seen a more than 50% decline in value as an investment since the purchase and a 20% decline in the last month. VCG is a publicly traded company on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.