SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES:

 Bernice Conn, Partner in Los Angeles Office, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P.

Bernice Conn is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., practicing in the Business Litigation and Antitrust and Trade Regulations groups.  She is experienced in trial and appellate practice involving complex litigation of commercial business disputes and consumer rights cases including misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, copyright, trademark and antirust on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants.

Bernice most recently tried Celador International, Ltd. v. The Walt Disney Company, a dispute over profits from the highly successful television show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"  A federal jury awarded Celador, the creator of the show, $270 million in damages after finding that Disney's subsidiaries, ABC Television, Buena Vista Television, and Valleycrest Productions had breached their profit sharing contract with Celador and their duty to deal fairly and in good faith with Celador.

Bernice, who has been an attorney with the firm since 1995 and a partner since 1999, earned her J.D. from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles.

Larry Gerbrandt, Principal, Media Valuation Partners

A leading media and entertainment executive, research analyst and consultant for more than 25 years, he has focused on the economic and strategic implications of the intersection between traditional media and emerging content delivery technologies.

As principal of Media Valuation Partners he oversees the firm’s valuation, strategic consulting, market research and litigation support engagements advising clients on the economics of media and content.  Prior to launching MVP he was SVP/general manager of Nielsen Analytics, a division of The Nielsen Company, focusing on emerging media technology economics and conducting primary research on consumer adoption of new media platforms. He was also at Kagan World Media (now SNL Kagan) for nearly 20 years.  In 2000, after Kagan’s sale to Primedia, he became COO and led its integration into Primedia’s MediaCentral division.  His background also includes experience in film and video production, commercial photography, cable TV system operations and magazine publishing.


Over the course of his career Mr. Gerbrandt has worked on some of the largest and most notable valuation and litigation support assignments in the film and entertainment industry, including serving as Disney’s valuation expert in the Katzenberg v. Disney case and on behalf of Dick Wolf in Wolf v. NBC Universal.  Major valuation assignments have included MGM/UA, The Weinstein Co., Carolco, The Learning Channel, Tempo TV, The Litchfield Theaters, The Health Channel, Mind Extension University, among many others. He created and developed the Kagan Economics of Basic Cable Networks database, considered to be the definitive source of cable network financial performance metrics and valuation benchmarks.

While at Kagan he launched more than 25 newsletters and databook products, including Home Shopping Invester, The DBS Report, Cable Network Investor, TV Program Investor, VOD Investor and Streaming Media Investor.  During his Nielsen tenured he authored several ground-breaking analyses on consumer adoption of emerging media platforms and the economic implications of these usage shifts, including Benchmarking The Digital Household and The Economics of On-Demand Programming.

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Mark Holscher, Partner in Los Angeles and San Francisco Office, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Mark Holscher is a partner in the Firm's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices and a member of the Commercial Litigation and White Collar Criminal Defense & Securities Enforcement groups. He has been selected and profiled as a leading trial lawyer for the last several years in Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America, and The International Who's Who of Business Crime Lawyers.  In both 2009 and 2008, he was selected as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California by the Daily Journal.  In 2005, USA Today named Mark one of the ten most prominent criminal trial lawyers in the country.  

Mark was named one of California Lawyer’s Lawyers of the Year 2000 for his successful defense of Los Alamos Nuclear Scientist Wen Ho Lee against espionage charges.  While at O'Melveny, he was a member of the defense team for former Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham and one of the trial lawyers for Jeffrey Skilling’s criminal prosecution relating to the collapse of Enron.  

Mark has represented Fortune 500 companies, audit committees, boards of directors, special committees and their executives in a broad range of criminal matters and has served as lead trial counsel in numerous complex civil litigation matters.  Mark has overseen dozens of internal investigations for publicly traded companies over a broad range of issues, including insider trading and stock manipulation, alleged stock options backdating, FCPA investigations, allegations of price fixing, alleged theft of trade secrets and various financial and accounting fraud issues.  He has also represented a variety of energy companies in several Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and RCRA matters, as well as various state AG regulatory investigations.

Mark served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California from 1989-1995, where he tried complex cases, including RICO, criminal bankruptcy, tax and fraud cases, as well as the Heidi Fleiss tax evasion and money laundering case.  In addition, he successfully argued several cases before the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals during his time with the U.S. Attorney's office and while in private practice.  In 1995, Mark was appointed Special Attorney to the U.S. Attorney General in the investigation of former Arizona Governor Symington. 

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Chuck Larsen, President, October Moon Television

Chuck Larsen has an extensive career in television station management, program production, marketing and distribution. Prior to October Moon, he was President of Worldwide Distribution for MTM Entertainment.October Moon provides the producers and profit participants of prime time network television series with detailed, individualized and specialized analysis of the many ways in which the program reaches its audience, and the ways in which revenue is achieved.

First goal is to work with the distribution entity to generate the greatest possible revenue from the program. Second goal is to assure that the fair share of that revenue flows to the profit participants. October Moon engages in direct distribution of select television programs to television stations, cable networks, and home video labels on behalf of its clients. The company evaluates each project, and tailors a distribution plan that responds to the constantly changing media environment to assure the highest possible return on the investment. Staff includes experts in marketing, research, barter advertising, domestic, international and home video sales.

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Steve Sills, Partner, Green Hasson & Janks LLP
Steve has over 25 years of entertainment accounting experience. His specialty involves audits of production and distribution of motion pictures and television programs on behalf of third party participants. Steve's other areas of expertise include merchandise licensing royalty audits and valuation of film and television properties and libraries. As a consultant, he has given expert testimony in entertainment litigation, been a contract negotiator for profit and royalty participants and participated in settlement negotiations of audit claims. Before founding Sills & Gentille in 1990, Steve spent 13 years at the CPA firm of Laventhol & Horwath.

Steve is an attorney, CPA and Forensic CPA. He has been a featured speaker at the California Society of Certified Public Accountants and New York CPA Foundation, as well as the UCLA and USC film schools. In addition, he taught a profit participation in film and television class at UCLA. Steve's publications include the following:

• Profit Participation in the Motion Picture Industry, Los Angeles Lawyer, April 1989
• Participants in the Motion Picture Industry, Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts Handbook, 1987
• Movie Money: Understanding Hollywood's Creative Accounting Practices, 1998 (2nd edition published in 2006). Available on Amazon.com.