30/06/2006

Sandrew Metronome cinemas sold to Finnkino Finland’s leading exhibition group Finnkino has just purchased the entire share capital of Sandrew Metronome Finland (SM Finland), including three multiplex cinemas: two in Helsinki and one in Turku.

The cinemas in the Finnish capital are the 10-screen Kinopalatsi, built in 1998, and the 2-screen Maxim Cinema, Finland’s oldest established movie theatre, inaugurated in 1909. The 9-screen Kinopalatsi in Turku was built in 2001. SM Finland posted net sales of approximately €9m in 2005 and the company employs 53 people.

Finnkino currently runs 15 cinemas with 70 screens in nine locations around Finland, admissions to which passed the 3m mark in 2005. The company, owned by the Rautakirja Group (part of the SanomaWSOY Scandinavian media concern) also has the MPDE film distribution and exhibition subsidiary in Estonia (including four cinemas of 18 screens), as well as distribution and exhibition arm SIA Forum Cinemas in Latvia (including two cinemas of a total 16 screens in Riga), and the WAB Forum Cinemas in Lithuania (including one 9-screen multiplex plus the rented 8-screen Akropolis multiplex in Vilnius in Vilnius).

Sandrew Metronome – owned entirely by Norwegian media group Schibsted since last May – has now completely withdrawn from the cinema market: In 2005, the group sold its Swedish cinemas to Triangel Film, which renamed the chain Astorias Cinemas, and last May sold its two Danish cinemas to Nordisk Film.

At the time, Kim Vestergaard, Managing Director of Sandrew Metronome, explained that the group’s new strategy was to "concentrate on the continued development of movies on DVD and in other up-and-coming technical formats as well as cinema distribution".