Cobalt, the London and Los Angeles-based sales and financing house, is tapping into German financing through a Euro 100m fund being launched by local studio facility Studio Hamburg and the German arm of ING Bank.

The partners are to finance around seven international pictures budgeted up to $20m each through the fund, with Cobalt handling worldwide sales on a non-exclusive basis. Titled Studio Hamburg WorldWide Pictures, the fund will also work with other international partners such as US majors and mini-majors.

The fund is being co-ordinated at Studio Hamburg by Wolfgang Esenwein, managing director of the production arm Studio Hamburg Letterbox Filmproduktion. Negotiations for Cobalt, which was unavailable for comment, were spearheaded by London-based Rodney Payne and LA-based Myles Nestel.

Having closed a string of US financing deals with producers including Chuck Gordon, Cobalt dramatically stepped up European activities at Cannes, unveiling a deal with BBC Films for a slate of big-budget pictures which Cobalt will sell through its sales arm under Peter Rogers. Cobalt recently pulled out of David Cronenberg's Spider, which Capitol Films boarded instead.

Letterbox has produced German films including Gran Paradiso, by Miguel Alexandre. The operation has a number of projects in development with Tele-Muenchen Group, including Margarethe von Trotta's Rosenstrasse.