Though Davis despises the tire-kicker characterization, it's easy to understand why there are doubts that he'll go through with a purchase. Since striking it rich as a wildcatter, Davis, 77, has amassed $4.6 billion through horse-trading and an instinct for knowing when to sell. But for every Beverly Hills Hotel, Twentieth Century Fox, Pebble Beach or other trophy property, there's a deal Davis walked away from.
Insiders at Davis' camp are confident he'll have the last laugh this time. Driven in part by opportunism and the certainty that Vivendi wants to unload the Hollywood assets to focus on its faster-growing investment in French telecommunications firm Groupe Cegetel, Davis has a special motive to do this deal. Having lost weight and survived the Internet bubble unscathed, Davis sees contemporaries such as Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch and Kirk Kerkorian still ruling their Hollywood empires with an iron fist, and he sees no reason he can't rejoin the party. (He sold Fox to Murdoch in 1985.) Davis and Vivendi's managers were meeting in late January.
In some ways Davis never left Hollywood. While his Beverly Hills mansion has long been a salon for Tinseltown's players and a regular stop on the charity circuit, he still maintains his office on the 28th floor of Century City's Fox Plaza, the sleek skyscraper made famous in the original Die Hard. When not dining at his regular table at Spago, he holds court in an office of lush cream-colored rugs and brass sculptures.
Though they won't speak on the record, Davis' people claim they've got both private equity and bank financing lined up to do the deal. At what price? They say a published $20 billion figure is wrong but not whether it's too high or too low. They're less specific about how they intend to add value to an unwieldy collection of studios, music labels and theme parks that frustrated the likes of Matsushita, Seagram and now Vivendi. For that they'll depend on Brian Mulligan, a journeyman Hollywood executive. Before serving as chairman of Fox Television and chief financial officer of Seagram, Mulligan was cochairman of Universal Pictures.
Given Davis' trading habits, Mulligan may want to hedge his bets with another job.