By Stuart Thomson

US-based kids content company Genius Brands International is to acquire a 29 per cent in German kids channel provider Your Family Entertainment Aktiengesellschaft (YFE) from Austrian shareholder F&M Film-und Medien Beteiligungs GmbH, with a plan to take overall control of the company behind kids characters Fix&Foxi.

Genius Brands will pay €2.00(US$2.26) per registered share for the F&M stake. The company and F&M also concluded an agreement on the joint exercise of voting rights for the shares held by both parties in YFE.

The deal effectively gives Genius Brands control over Your Family Entertainment and the US company is required to submit a mandatory offer to acquire all registered shares in the German programmer. Genius Brands said it intends to make such an offer for a cash payment of `€2.00 per share, giving a premium of around 65 per cent on the company’s current share price.

The mandatory offer document will be published on the Internet after approval by Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).

YFE’s management welcomed Genius Brands’ entry as a new strategic shareholder in the company.

Genius Brands International designs, manufactures, markets, and licenses children’s entertainment and consumer products for media and retail distribution. The management and supervisory board of YFE are planning to enter into a strategic partnership with Genius Brands to encompass to the bundling of sales and broadcasting activities, film libraries, and streaming platforms. Further synergies could result from the global rights management of licensing YFE programmes, it said.

Genius Brands has said that it will invest up to €7 million in YFE to support the expansion of its global digital and linear channel presence as well as YFE’s formats. The German company will be renamed Genius Family Entertainment Aktiengesellschaft.