The bank avoided financial disaster by moving its troubled debts and liabilities into a new state-owned company, Consortium de Réalisation (CDR). The creation of the CDR was highly controversial, as many did not believe that the French government should have bailed out the bank. The CDR notably agreed to pay US$525 million to the California Department of Insurance in order to head off a lawsuit over the Executive Life insurance scandal. The CDR also ended up with the various film libraries from now defunct film production companies that defaulted on their loans. The library was known as the Epic film library. The Loeb & Loeb law firm spent 4 years determining the full extent of the film assets. In late 1997, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment out bid Disney, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Live Entertainment and several other companies, for the Epic library at $225 million. Despite losing the bid, MGM would acquire the Epic library and the rest of PolyGram's pre-1996 library in 1998.