The investment company owned by the billionaire Philip Anschutz said on Thursday that it had decided to call off efforts to sell the Anschutz Entertainment Group, a sports and live entertainment juggernaut that owns stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Kings.
The company’s chief executive of 17 years, Tim Leiweke, will step down and will be replaced by Dan Beckerman.
When Mr. Anschutz’s company put the entertainment group up for sale in September, a crop of potential bidders emerged. Among them: Guggenheim Partners, the investment firm that owns the Los Angeles Dodgers; Colony Capital, a private equity firm with a focus on real estate assets; and Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotechnology investor.
Though only a part of Mr. Anschutz’s vast empire â€" one that has encompassed railroads, oil drilling and movie theters â€" the entertainment unit has been perhaps the highest-profile asset in recent years. Anschutz Entertainment combined real estate, entertainment and event promotion to become a unique corporate animal.
Among its holdings are LA Live in Los Angeles, which includes the Staples Center and sells tickets through the company’s AEG Live subsidiary. It has a similar all-inclusive structure in London, the O2 complex.
But for weeks, a sale appeared increasingly doubtful, with the Anschutz Company seeking a price tag north of about $8 billion, people briefed on the matter have said.
“From the very beginning of the sales process, we have made it clear to our employees and partners throughout the world that unless the right buyer came forward with a transaction on acceptable terms we would not sell the company,†Mr. Anschutz said in a statement.
The billionaire will instead take on a more active management role, becoming part of an “office of the chairman†alongside Mr. Bec! kerman and other senior executives.
