James Bond for Sale?

The legendary Hollywood giant MGM has been in trouble for a while now. It’s been on the block since the end of last year. But with its $3.7 billion in debt (and possibly another billion-and-a-bit in new debt needed to keep its current projects rolling), and a time when the world is still cautious about big spending, it hasn’t finalised a buyer yet.

Its CEO was quoted as saying, around November 2009, that he doubted they could get a sale price north of $1.5 billion. Sad times, considering the company was valued at $5 billion six years ago.

At any rate, while a number of buyers have expressed interest, there’s no word of a sale yet, so, to all our friends on the Forbes Rich List, it isn’t too late. You could get yourself some excellent movies for the home library at the same time as demonstrating that India is booming.

But if you’d rather not put down that much cash, consider picking up a bit of the action. The studio might be willing to part with its James Bond franchise (the world’s most successful franchise ever, until the Harry Potter series overtook it). The latest in the series, Bond 23, is on hold, with further development suspended indefinitely. Informal online evaluations of the franchise put it at around the $700 million mark at most, though MGM thinks its worth a lot more. Think about it. For the price of a couple of IPL teams, you could make a whole lot of 007 fans around the world very happy if you took over.

Bound to be a quicker return on investment than British auto companies or historical relics, yes?