ICM announced to employees on Friday afternoon an agreement “on principle terms to establish an agent-owned partnership for ICM,” designed to buyout the controlling stake held by Suhail Rizvi and his private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management. The financial firm bought into ICM in 2005 for $75 million and helped finance the acquisition the following year of Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann.
The agreement comes after weeks of breathless speculation from Deadline.com and other Hollywood trades, though the WSJ‘s sources “said the agents had been negotiating with Rizvi toward Friday’s deal for a month, and described it as an amicable transaction.” All accounts see it as a victory for president Chris Silbermann and his former colleagues from Broder Webb, marking the triumph of ICM’s television department.
Reports agree that details of how the new partnership will be structured have yet to be announced–or perhaps even finalized. No one is expecting the new structure to have any effect on ICM’s books department–though it also is not clear if anyone from the books department is considered important enough to be included in the new partnership. (One source tells the Hollywood Reporter that “everyone at ICM holding Class A and Class B stock are part of the management buyout. Not everyone who’s part of the management buyout will be offered to join the partnership.”) No details have been offered yet on how the agents will finance the buyout either.