MCA Pushed Up by Buying Program of Investor Who Is Said to Be Hoping for Spinoff of Land
MCA, the company that brought you the movie "E.T.," has another high-flier on its hands -- its own stock. But for all the big entertainment company knows about who has been accumulating its shares over the past couple of months -- and pushing the price upward in a generally aimless stock market -- the buyer might as well be, like E.T., from outer space.</br></br>Without too much fuss or fanfare, one million to two million of MCA's 48.5 million shares outstanding have been bought since late winter for a single investor through Drexel Burnham Lambert's Los Angeles brokerage office. The buyer (one Drexel source indicates it's an insurance company) is believed to be operating through a numbered account to preserve secrecy. And the secrecy effort, successful so far, may continue; another Drexel official indicates that the purchaser may accumulate just enough MCA stock to remain slightly below the Securities and Exchange Commission's 5%-ownership public-reporting requirement.</br></br>"We don't know who's been acquiring our stock, or the purpose," says Sidney J. Sheinberg, MCA's president.</br></br>Drexel knows, but isn't saying. However, one official there indicates that the buyer will assume the role of a passive investor, with the expectation that MCA eventually will maximize its greatly undervalued real-estate assets by spinning off its land holdings around its Universal City, Calif., headquarters, outside Los Angeles.</br></br>Passivity would seem to be the prudent course. Even Wall Street's fastest gunslingers appear loathe to get into a takeover battle with Lew R. Wasserman, MCA's well-entrenched chairman and chief executive. The 70-year-old Mr. Wasserman controls 25% of MCA and has ample reserves of power via his eminence as dean of the Hollywood movie moguls.