Elvis Parent Company Calls Off Plans To Go Private

December 26, 2008

The publicly traded company that owns 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises has completely called off its attempt to go private.

The notice from CKX Inc. cites “global economic difficulties and related credit freeze” as the reason it isn’t pursuing a merger with 19X Inc. that had been planned for earlier this year.

The merger was to be a factor in a number of plans CKX has for the Elvis brand. That includes an estimated $250 million transformation of Graceland and the surrounding commercial area on Elvis Presley Boulevard between Brooks and Raines roads.

Neither CKX executives nor officials at Elvis Presley Enterprises have talked in much detail about those plans or the impact the credit crisis might have on them.

EPE has been buying up apartment complexes west of Graceland Plaza on the other side of Elvis Presley Boulevard from the mansion. Demolition work started on those complexes several weeks ago.

Off indefinitely

CKX president and chief executive officer Robert F.X. Sillerman, through the CKX 2007 annual report, has said the plans would include Elvis-themed attractions including restaurants, a new hotel and some type of convention center.

Sillerman, along with Simon Fuller, controls 19X. Fuller is best known as the creator of the “American Idol” television program. American Idol is among the properties of CKX, along with Elvis Presley Enterprises.

As 2008 began, Sillerman announced the plans for the merger and a target date of Oct. 31.

In August, Sillerman, in a previously recorded message, told a gathering of Elvis fans in Memphis, “It would be irresponsible to say that the economic climate is not having an impact.

“I don’t think it’s going to slow down what we’re doing,” he said in response to a written question about how the national economy would affect plans for Graceland and the area of Whitehaven surrounding the estate. “We have to modify to some extent those things that we’re going to initiate at first.”

He also told the group of Elvis fans that Graceland itself wouldn’t be changed in an expansion. But he said the Graceland plaza where tourists board buses for the ride up the hill to tour the mansion might eventually move to the same side of Elvis Presley Boulevard as the mansion.

By September, Sillerman and Fuller announced they were terminating the 19X merger because of economic conditions, but also said they intended to pursue an “alternative transaction.”

With the Dec. 18 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Sillerman and Fuller have said “that they no longer intend to actively pursue an alternate transaction at this time for the acquisition of (CKX).”

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