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Hong Kong's Camsing International Buys Stan Lee's Pow! Entertainment

Hong Kong firm Camsing International Holding announced on Monday that it has acquired Stan Lee's Pow! Entertainment company. The companies did not disclose how much the acquisition was valued at. The acquisition has led to Camsing acquiring the rights to all of the television shows, games, animation, and comics intellectual property under Pow! Entertainment. Lee will stay on as Chief Creative Officer, and Camsing does not expect the acquisition to have a large effect on day-to-day management and production.

Vivian Lo, chairman and CEO of Camsing, stated that the company wants to "develop another ‘Marvel’ in the Asian market." Camsing's U.S. Vice President Shane Duffy will become the CEO of Pow! Entertainment, and the current President and CEO, Gill Champion, will remain as President.

Lee founded Pow! Entertainment alongside Champion and Arthur Lieberman in 2001. The company has collaborated with Japanese and American publishers, as well as anime studios to produce content. It has collaborated with Shueisha and Viz Media to produce Hiroyuki Takei's Ultimo manga, which ended in 2015. It collaborated with Bones and Wowmax Media to develop the Heroman anime and manga in 2010. Currently, it is collaboration with Studio DEEN to develop The Reflection anime project, which premieres this summer. Crunchyroll will stream the anime.

Camsing has offices in Singapore, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Los Angeles, and has worked with PepsiCo, the China Construction Bank, Procter & Gamble, Nokia, the NBA, Visa, Blizzard, Disney, Hasbro, and Warner Bros., among others, and has worked on such properties as Kung Fu Panda, Transformers, Star Wars, World of Warcraft, and Shaun the Sheep. It has interests in the oil and insurance industries in Chinese-speaking countries.

Source: Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo), Deadline (Anita Busch)