Buy-Up: making an offer film company couldn't refuse

Serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson has taken a 9 per cent stake and joined the board of film distributor Metrodome as it snapped up a library of more than 600 films, including The Godfather and Psycho.

Metrodome is paying £1.6 million for Kentish Town-based Hollywood Classics, which owns the theatrical and home-video rights to a wide range of classic films from studios including Universal, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros and the UK Film Council.

The deal is being financed through a share placing that is being supported by Johnson, who is best known for his involvement in Pizza Express. The new shares are being issued at 2p - a slight premium to today's price of 1.88p.

Hollywood Classics had revenues of £6.7m last year and made a pre-tax profit of £510,000.

Mark Webster, chairman of Metrodome, says: "This important acquisition is the next step in our mission to become one of the leading independent rights-management groups in the UK, providing independent producers and other intellectual property owners with a comprehensive solution for worldwide exploitation of their IP and content across all platforms."