Caledonia Investments plc, a self-managed investment trust, has acquired a majority stake in Cooke Optics. The current Cooke Optics management team, including chairman Les Zellan, CEO Robert Howard and COO Alan Merrills, remains in place, and day-to-day activities at the Leicester-based company will continue unchanged.
“We have been experiencing a sustained period of growth, and the time was right to look for a new investor to help us develop further,” said Zellan. “Caledonia, another historic British company, has a reputation for long-term investment and for supporting management teams to grow their businesses. With a strong financial partner in Caledonia, Cooke is in an excellent position to continue designing and making more of our coveted lenses for the film and television industry.”
The lineup of Cooke lenses is designed from the ground up, not repurposed from existing components, and every lens is hand crafted in the Leicester factory.
Cooke’s most recent developments include the acclaimed S7/i full frame lens range which correctly anticipated the current large format trend; the Panchro/i Classic range which replicate the beloved look of vintage Speed Panchro lenses but with modern housing, mounts and glass; and the Anamorphic/i SF range that adds more exaggerated anamorphic attributes including lens flare and oval bokeh. The company is also behind the lens metadata standard, /i Technology, which captures valuable lens information for use on-set and in postproduction.
The latest Cooke lens ranges will be on display on Stand 12.D10 at IBC 2018, held in Amsterdam, Netherlands from September 14-18, 2018.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More