With State's Film Tax Credit, Ceos Make Bank
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20140616-NEWS--0001-NAT-CCI-CN_-- 6/13/2014 6:29 PM Page 1 BUILDING-PASS HOARDER TELLS ALL Oh, for the days you just NEW YORK BUSINESS® walked in PAGE 33 VOL. XXX, NO. 24 WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM JUNE 16-22, 2014 PRICE: $3.00 REPORT FORTUNATE 100 Regeneron’s riches How a biotech company’s high-priced, blockbuster drug spawns controversy —and eye-popping pay for executives BY GALE SCOTT Every six weeks, Anthony Napoli, 66, a retired Brooklyn schoolteacher, gets an injection of Eylea, straight into the white of his right eye.The procedure is uncomfortable, he said, but staves off an aggressive ailment called age-related wet macular degeneration. Without treatment, 90% of patients who have it are at risk of going blind. Eylea has had a far-reaching impact not only on patients, but also on the company that makes it,Tarrytown-based Regeneron, its executives, and the biotech world in general. The drug, whose $1,850-per-dose monthly cost is paid mostly by See DOSE on Page 18 BLIND TO THE COST: An $1,850- per-month dose of the Regeneron wonder drug Eylea—straight into the white of the eye—can stave off a blindness-inducing form of the eye ailment macular degeneration. veer With state’s film tax credit, CEOs make bank INSIDE Higher pay Studio, network heads rake in tens of millions, but get even more in incentives encourages Time Warner, which wouldn’t comment, is hardly the only enter- corporate boards BY AARON ELSTEIN tainment giant to benefit from the state’s generosity. CBS paid Chief Executive Leslie Moonves $66 million last year to flex Time Warner paid its chief executive, Jeffrey Bewkes, $33 million last (see list, Page 15) and received $15 million in 2011 and 2012 to pro- their year. Yet that considerable figure is dwarfed by another: $108 million. duce shows such as The Good Wife here. That’s the amount Time Warner has collected from the state of New York NBCUniversal,which paid CEO Steve Burke $31 million in 2013, muscles in the past three years because its HBO and New Line Cinema divisions got more than $100 million from the state in the previous two years to PAGE 13 went to Brooklyn to film TV shows such as Girls and movies including make movies and shows here,including 30 Rock,plus millions more re- Sex and the City 2. cently to move The Tonight Show from Los Angeles. Fox paid CEO Rupert Murdoch $26 million last year while taking THE LIST in more than $50 million from the state in 2011 and 2012. Viacom 24 The Fortunate 100: 5 showered CEO Philippe Dauman with $37 million in 2013 and col- lected more than $20 million in incentives in the previous two years. New York’s best-paid It’s all thanks to the New York state film and TV incentive program. CEOs PAGE 15 Launched in 2004 with $25 million to encourage TV producers and See TAX INCENTIVES on Page 28 NEWSPAPER 71486 01068 0 20140616-NEWS--0002-NAT-CCI-CN_-- 6/13/2014 6:28 PM Page 1 EDITOR’S NOTE Light fantastic FYICRAINSNEWYORK.COM The city’s white elephants don’t get much more elephantine than the Mayor’s HS admissions crumbling New York State Pavilion from the 1964 World’s Fair, a policy not likely to pass rusting Stonehenge from the Space ayor Bill de Blasio’s luck in Age that’s in such pathetic shape Albany has been mixed: He for a 50-year-old that it has been earned victories on fenced off to protect passersby Glenn Coleman M prekindergarten funding and traffic from disaster. It would cost an cameras, but not yet on a tax hike, a estimated $14 million to simply minimum-wage increase or a lower speed demolish the thing—those Jetsons-era Observation limit. And last week it became clear that Towers and that crazy ellipsoid known as the Tent of the state Legislature isn’t about to change Tomorrow. (Nothing says temporary quite like “tent” the admissions process that he believes does, does it?) The official guesstimate to merely largely excludes blacks and Latinos from stabilize the site, with no public access, is around the city’s top public high schools. ¶ Allies $43 million, and to reopen it to visitors at least of the mayor have introduced a bill to newscom $52 million. Damned If You Don’t, meet Damned If allow Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Technical high schools to consider applicants’ You Do. Queens Borough President Melinda Katz grades, attendance and state test scores, rather than just the aptitude exam that for decades has made clear to me last week which side she’s choosing: been the sole criterion for entry. But the legislation—which some contend would lower standards— She says she has found about $1 million in her is going nowhere, The New York Times reported. ¶ The issue hits close to home for Mr. de Blasio: borough budget to upgrade the electrical systems in His son, Dante, is among the 8% of Brooklyn Tech students who are black, and his deputy mayor the pavilion so it can light up the night’s skyline from for education initiatives, Richard Buery, is an African-American graduate of Stuyvesant, where Flushing Meadows Corona Park as brightly as the only seven blacks and 21 Hispanics were offered admission this year. Nearly three-quarters of steel Unisphere globe now does. “Once we light it Stuy’s 3,300 students are Asian. ¶ The de Blasio administration can unilaterally alter the up,” she said of her strategy,“the people will make the admissions process at the five other high schools that rely on the 2.5-hour exam, but has been case [for the $40 million being sought from the city waiting for Albany to change the state law that compels Stuy,Tech and Bronx Science to use it for restoration].They’re going to see it when they’re exclusively.That could be a while. —erik engquist landing in a plane.They’re going to see it when they are stuck on the Van Wyck Expressway trying to get VICE SQUAD. Time Warner is in talks 2009, just after it narrowly avoided into Manhattan.They’re going to see it on the cable to buy a big stake in the multiplatform collapse the previous fall. Mr. Ben- HOORAY! Vice Media for as much as $1 billion. mosche will leave the board and be- REAL ESTATE news channels: It’s what they show in the background Founded in 1994,Vice draws a young come an adviser to the company. … INVESTOR on CNN, on Al Jazeera, when they’re reporting a OCCUPY WALL STREET SETTLEMENT. Jason Buzi, the demographic that Time Warner millionaire who story from Queens.” You mean it’s your Brooklyn hopes to capture. … R.I.P. GLENN The city will pay nearly $600,000 to hid cash Bridge? I asked. She declined to take the BRITT. Longtime Time Warner Cable 14 Occupy Wall Street participants in across San CEO Glenn Britt died of cancer last a suit that accused police officers of Francisco, interborough bait. “It’s a significant, iconic structure,” brought his week at 65. He had spent more than a unlawfully arresting them in 2012. money- she said. “And it’s ours.” I look forward to watching decade at the helm, and oversaw its The city will also pay $333,000 in le- scavenger hunt spinoff from its parent company in to New York for the glow from the pavilion during my next gal fees. Attorneys for the plaintiffs City. nighttime landing at LaGuardia. 2009. … GOLDMAN PAYS UP. Gold- said it was the biggest settlement yet man Sachs and Bain connected to the Capital Partners will movement. … OY VEY! CROWN HEIGHTS THIS WEEK IN CRAIN’S pay $67 million and ‘We do not FOUR $54 million, respec- STARBUCKS. In yet STRIPPERS tively, to settle claims feel justice another sign that the were arrested IN THE BOROUGHS-------------------------- 3 for drugging that they intentional- was served Brooklyn neighbor- wealthy men IN THE MARKETS----------------------------------4 ly drove down prices hood is gentrifying, and scamming of takeover deals by for us’ the coffee franchise them out of SMALL BUSINESS ------------------------------5 more than conspiring not to out- —Egon Smullyan, a will open an outpost $200,000. THE INSIDER -----------------------------------------------6 bid each other. The customer who lost more at the base of a new case involved eight than $19,000 after popular residential building OPINION -------------------------------------------------------- 10 istockphoto buyout deals totaling Brooklyn wedding venue at 341 Eastern Park- STEVE HINDY ------------------------------------------11 more than $100 bil- ReBar shuttered. Owner way this fall. … NEW lion. … NEW AIG CEO. Jason Stevens will spend up KNICKS COACH. when they were both with the Los GREG DAVID--------------------------------------------11 American Interna- to 10 years in prison for tax Derek Fisher, an 18- Angeles Lakers. ... NEW HEDWIG. REAL ESTATE-------------------------------------------12 tional Group tapped evasion year NBA veteran, Fresh off his Tony Award win for best Peter Hancock, the signed a five-year, actor,Neil Patrick Harris will leave his REPORT-----------------------------------------------------------13 head of its property/casualty division $25 million contract to be the head role as the main character of Hedwig THE LIST ---------------------------------------------------------15 since 2011, as its new chief, effective coach of the New York Knicks. Mr. and the Angry Inch on Aug.17.He will GOTHAM GIGS CLASSIFIEDS -----------------------------------------26 Sept. 1. He will succeed Robert Ben- Fisher—who has no coaching experi- be replaced by Andrew Rannells,who Ned Sullivan is fighting to mosche, who was brought out of re- ence—won five championships play- starred in The Book of Mormon.