Media CFO with Tobias Jaeger Tobias Jaeger

We sat down with Lorraine Ruckstuhl, Head of TMT at Barclays in London to talk about her bank’s renewed and increased SVOD production finance fund, common investment banking misunderstandings, Barclay’s media banking on a project and corporate level, and her way to the top as a female banker. Lorraine started her career in banking more than twenty years ago and joined Barclays in 2005. Lorraine and her specialized media team are working with clients in television and film production, broadcasting and publishing as well as live and recorded music, covering their clients’ corporate finance as we as project finance needs. Recently, her team made headlines again by renewing their 100m pound UK SVOD fund and upping it to 200m pounds.

We sat down with John Gleeson, Partner and Head of Entertainment at Saffery Champness in Dublin, Ireland to talk about Ireland’s growing role in international film and television production and the opportunities for international as well as domestic producers as a result of a new global content arms race. John started his career in tax, more than 25 years ago, and has become one of the leading Irish tax advisors in media and entertainment, specializing in tax structuring, production incentives, and the famous Section 481 film and television tax credit. John has worked in companies ranging from boutique to med science, to Big 4 firms, and in 2014, he joined Grant Thornton Ireland to build and grow their local and global media and entertainment practice. John and his team built a stellar reputation over the next five years, so, the whole team was ultimately acquired by Saffery Champness in April 2019.

We sat down with former Brave Bison CEO Claire Hungate to talk to her about her start in the television industry by working in a pubcaster in-house legal team and subsequently rising through the ranks in business affairs and, later, company leadership at several production companies. Claire was instrumental in making a studio-backed management buy-out of a listed production company a reality and after leading the newly private company for some time, Claire became the CEO of AIM-listed social content studio Brave Bison. Claire started her career more than 20 years ago as a barrister in BBC’s in-house legal department. Since then she has been in the entertainment industry in various legal and business affairs roles in production companies like Princess Productions, Wall to Wall media and subsequently as Chief Operating Officer at AIM-listed shared media group. In that role, Claire was instrumental in taking the company private in a management buy-out backed by Warner Bros. and she became the CEO once the MBO was completed. Claire just recently completed another milestone in her career as CEO of AIM-listed Brave Bison and is ready to take on the next challenge.

We sat down with Saffery Champness partner Nigel Burke to talk to him about how he got started as an accountant in Ireland, learned the entertainment business first as an accountant specialized in music and tours and a subsequently moved to film and television to become one of the UK’s leading tax experts for media & entertainment. Nigel started his career in accounting nearly 30 years ago in Ireland and worked for firms like Godfrey Allan and RSM Tenon. Today he leads Saffery Champness’ financial, accounting, audit, and taxation advice for media and entertainment clients, ranging from independent production companies to major studios. Over the last three decades, Nigel has built an expertise and network that makes him one of the leading advisors on tax structured film and TV finance and tax credits in the UK, as well as all aspects of corporate finance needs of media and entertainment clients. He’s a frequent lecturer and speaker on all these subjects and continues to be a trusted partner of finance managers and CFOs on both sides of the Atlantic.

We sat down with Off The Fence founder Ellen Windemuth to talk about factual television, her company’s dominance in the space, hiring the best people, and ultimately selling the firm she spent more than 20 years building. Ellen Windemuth started her career nearly 30 years ago in sales of factual television. After working for companies like Atlantis and Fremantle she founded Off The Fence in 1994. Since then she has built the company into the omnipresent global leader that it is today. With a catalog of several thousands of hours of high-quality factual programming, Ellen and her team have, of course, made themselves an attractive target for acquisition and while she resisted the many offers she had gotten over the years she finally struck a deal with ZDF Enterprises in early 2019. Ellen continues to run the company to date and has set her sights on the next frontier already.

the media and entertainment industry is a reputation and expertise he has built over the last 30 years. Sky literally wrote the handbook on tax in media & entertainment as his landmark Treatise is used as a training book by the IRS for their entertainment group. Sky got his law degrees from UCLA and beside his legal practice Sky is a successful author with his landmark book suitably entitled “The Biz”. He is a frequent lecturer, contributor, and speaker as well as a fixture on all major top attorney lists and rankings from Chambers, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Super Lawyers. Sky is appreciated and respected for his direct, to the point style as well as a broad legal knowledge base which helped him build a reputation for efficient agreements and handling all aspects of the corporate lifecycle of the entities and organizations he represents.