Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation,doing business as Lionsgate, is an American, Canadian-domiciled entertainment & media company. The company was formed on July 10, 1997, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is currently headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
In addition to its well-known Lionsgate Films division, which generated the seventh-highest gross revenue in North America in 2015, the company contains other divisions such as Lionsgate Television and Lionsgate Interactive. It owns a variety of subsidiaries such as the American film production company Summit Entertainment, and Debmar-Mercury, a television syndication company acquired by Lionsgate in 2006.
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation (Lionsgate) was formed in 1997 by Frank Giustra and Avi Federgreen with a $16 million investment including another $40 million from other investors which included Keyur Patel and Yorkton Securities' executives such as G. Scott Paterson. Giustra had recently retired as CEO from Yorkton, an investment bank, and Paterson was then President. Giustra then merged Lionsgate with listed Beringer Gold Corp. (founded in 1986) to take the company public. Beringer's mining assets were soon sold off.
Lionsgate then began a series of acquisitions to get into the film industry. The company bought a number of small production facilities and distributors, starting with Montreal-based Cinépix Film Properties (renamed as Lions Gate Films) and North Shore Studios (renamed Lions Gate Studios) in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mandalay Television was acquired by Lionsgate from Peter Guber for a 4% Lionsgate stake. In 1998, Lionsgate helped Guber form Mandalay Pictures with a 45% investment in Mandalay. Lionsgate followed that up with a June purchase of International Movie Group, Inc. (IMG), a bankrupt film distributor previously invested in by Guber and Yorktown Securities, for its film library. IMG's CEO Peter Strauss became president of Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc. (LGE), Lionsgate's U.S. film & TV production & distribution subsidiary. Lions Gate Media subsidiary was also formed to produce for television.