bye bye EMI

[porcy62]

I mentioned Angel somewhere - possibly in a different thread - no worries - just saying I'm right there with you.

Ah, yes, Angel, I have some Mahler's symphonies on Angel records somewhere...

edit: I had them, lost in some moves

Edited May 31, 2007 by porcy62

[Guy Berger]

Maybe I wasn't clear. High-selling artists like Norah Jones, Van Morrison, and Al Green are obviously interested in releasing new music under the Blue Note brand. I don't think there's any such parallel interest in releasing new music under the Prestige, Stax or Specialty brands.

Guy

Ah, I see - do you think those people chose Blue Note or was it EMI who did the deciding?

MG

No clue.

Guy

[J Larsen]

I'm also not sure it matters. If EMI decided on BN for those artists, don't you think there was a reason why?

[Chuck Nessa]

Maybe I wasn't clear. High-selling artists like Norah Jones, Van Morrison, and Al Green are obviously interested in releasing new music under the Blue Note brand. I don't think there's any such parallel interest in releasing new music under the Prestige, Stax or Specialty brands.

Guy

Ah, I see - do you think those people chose Blue Note or was it EMI who did the deciding?

MG

No clue.

Guy

In (at least) the majority of those cases, the "artist" chose the "label".

[Tjazz]

Maybe the new owners will take "Music from EMI" off the spine of the Blue Note CDs.

[Chuck Nessa]

Boy, that's near the top of my list too!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Maybe I wasn't clear. High-selling artists like Norah Jones, Van Morrison, and Al Green are obviously interested in releasing new music under the Blue Note brand. I don't think there's any such parallel interest in releasing new music under the Prestige, Stax or Specialty brands.

Guy

Ah, I see - do you think those people chose Blue Note or was it EMI who did the deciding?

MG

No clue.

Guy

In (at least) the majority of those cases, the "artist" chose the "label".

The impression I got - and obviously I was wrong - was that EMI was putting on BN some people about whom there was some uncertainty - Anita Baker, who hadn't made an album for a decade; Green & Morrison, whose best selling days have probably passed; Norah Jones, whose enormous success couldn't have been forecasted; and so on.

MG

[Guy Berger]

Daily Telegraph

Enjoy that last set of RVGs and Connoisseurs, because there won't be many more of them.

Terra Firma brings EMI down to earth

By James Hall , Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:36am BST 02/09/2007

The party could soon be over at EMI. Terra Firma, the new private-equity owner of the record label, is to stamp out any signs of creative extravagance and financial excess at the company, which is home to artists such as Robbie Williams and Lily Allen.

Late last week Terra Firma said it is replacing Eric Nicoli, EMI's chief executive, and Martin Stewart, its chief financial officer, with three executives with no experience of the music industry. Chris Roling, until this year head of finance, procurement and logistics at ICI, the chemicals company, Ashley Unwin, a former management consultant, and Julie Williamson, a Terra Firma insider, will now set about reviewing the business from top to bottom.

An executive close to Terra Firma said the new management's remit is clear: "The assumption is that business discipline has been lacking in this industry. Yes, you need people who know Pete Doherty, but you also need discipline. This assumption could be wrong and arrogant, but the trio are going in to see if it is correct."

EMI insiders said although Nicoli and his predecessor Alain Levy went a long way cutting costs and cracking down on music industry excess, the company is still populated by record industry old-timers. The arrival of the distinctly un-rock 'n' roll management triumvirate has left some EMI executives quaking in their cowboy boots.

"EMI still has a quirky way of working. You are not viewed with credibility until you've served an apprenticeship standing in a North London pub with your arms folded watching some unsigned band," said one former record industry executive.

Even Nicoli, who joined EMI in 1999, was seen as an outsider by many in the industry because he trained as a physicist and spent most of his career in the food-manufacturing sector.

"Eric had been a non-executive before he became chairman but some in the business always viewed him with scepticism.

"He was seen as a man in a suit who occasionally put on a Johnny Cash-style black shirt to give himself credibility," said the former executive.

However, another source said most vestiges of music industry largesse have already been cleared out of EMI. "Had Terra Firma done all of this four or five years ago it would have found very rich pickings. But Nicoli grappled with the historic excess the industry had and instilled a more cost-focused, business-like approach. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has gone," he said.

The most notorious excesses were during the era of Ken Berry, the head of EMI's recorded music division until his departure in 2001, and his wife Nancy, who headed Virgin Music, which was bought by EMI. Berry left with a £6.1m payoff on top of his £3.7m salary.

Media figures have always tended to be larger than life because they need to be risk-takers in a hit-driven industry where most films and most albums lose money. But the Berry's reign at EMI was also commercially chequered. As head of Virgin, his wife signed Mariah Carey, the US diva, on a rumoured £50m five-album contract. However, in January 2002 EMI ditched Carey after her much-hyped album Glitter sold just 2m copies. EMI paid £19.6m to terminate Carey's contract and wrote off the £18.5m it had spent promoting her.

The media world has had clear-outs of creatives before. Just after the millennium a raft of high-profile showmen bosses such as Steve Case at AOL Time Warner, Tommy Mottola from Sony Music and Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi left their positions. They were replaced by "suits" such as Andrew Lack at Sony and Jean-Rene Fourtou at Vivendi, neither of whom had worked in the record industry before.

Edited September 3, 2007 by Guy

[king ubu]

just a thought, but I think the "top to bottom" approach may be one of the core reasons why they're all on a sinking ship in these music multis... they are so effing clueless up there!

[sidewinder]

a former management consultant

Oh God. One of the 'B-Ark' crew..

[Free For All]

Terra Firma said it is replacing Eric Nicoli, EMI's chief executive, and Martin Stewart, its chief financial officer, with three executives with no experience of the music industry

[dave9199]

It's The Beatles' Apple & Allen Klein all over again!

[Chuck Nessa]

It's The Beatles' Apple & Allen Klein all over again!

Much worse. If that's all it was the company would still "function".

[kh1958]

Most likely, in a couple of years, they will be in bankruptcy court.

[Guy Berger]

Most likely, in a couple of years, they will be in bankruptcy court.

Possible, but my understanding is that companies that get bought out by private equity firms tend to outperform (after going public again) those that don't.

Guy

Edited September 4, 2007 by Guy

[Chuck Nessa]

Most likely, in a couple of years, they will be in bankruptcy court.

Possible, but my understanding is that companies that get bought out by private equity firms tend to outperform those that don't.

Guy

Only for the money guys.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

a former management consultant

Oh God. One of the 'B-Ark' crew..

Yes - run more water, please, No 1.

MG

[Jazzmoose]

Terra Firma said it is replacing Eric Nicoli, EMI's chief executive, and Martin Stewart, its chief financial officer, with three executives with no experience of the music industry

That pretty much sums it up.

[Jazzmoose]

p/s Q: WHY ARE THESE ASSWIPES EVEN IN 'THE JAZZ BUSINESS'?

My guess is word three, not word two...

[ASNL77]

Where can I find the list of all the Connoisseurs? I am sure this was posted in another thread but I can't find it...

[Guy Berger]

Most likely, in a couple of years, they will be in bankruptcy court.

Possible, but my understanding is that companies that get bought out by private equity firms tend to outperform those that don't.

Guy

Only for the money guys.

I was talking purely about profits and shareholders; I didn't realize that was unclear.

Guy

[kh1958]

Most likely, in a couple of years, they will be in bankruptcy court.

Possible, but my understanding is that companies that get bought out by private equity firms tend to outperform those that don't.

Guy

Only for the money guys.

Only when the economy is rising. When the economy starts to go into a downward cycle, private equity leveraged buyout target companies often head for bankruptcy court.

[Guy Berger]

This is the paper I was thinking about. It looks to me like there could be serious selection issues here (need to know more about their "comprehensive sample"), but it's impossible to judge without reading the paper.

It doesn't say anything about the performance of such IPOs during recessions in the abstract; perhaps they discuss them in the paper.

The "quick flip" bit might be relevant to EMI/Terra Firma.

download paper

The Performance of Reverse Leveraged Buyouts

JERRY X. CAO

Boston College

JOSH LERNER

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) October 15, 2006

Abstract:

Reverse leveraged buyouts (RLBOs) have been received increased public scrutiny but attracted little systematic study. We collect a comprehensive sample of 496 RLBOs between 1980 and 2002 and examine three- and five-year stock performance of these offerings. RLBOs appear to consistently outperform other IPOs and the stock market as a whole, with economically and statistically meaningful positive returns. There is no evidence of a deterioration of returns over time, despite the growth of the buyout market: RLBOs performed strongly in the late 1980s, the mid-1990s, and the 2000s. Large RLBOs that are backed by private equity firms with more capital under management perform better. We also find the so-called quick flips - when private equity firms sell off an investment within a year after acquisition - underperform.

Keywords: RLBO, IPO, Private Equity, Long-run performance

JEL Classifications: G10, G23

Working Paper Series

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Guy-- wtf? seriously, define "outperform." don't be so "inside" whatever it is yr doing to parrot the propaganda of yr MBA masters. you. are. a fucking. cog (< dog, bc unlike Michael Vick, there will be no public outcry if yr mistreated). & will gladly be disposed of & forgotten as soon as it's feasible. why? "performance."

elder don clementine ©

chief technology officer

gritsville art & fab

p/s Q: WHY ARE THESE ASSWIPES EVEN IN 'THE JAZZ BUSINESS'?

This is not rocket science, Clem. When I was 15 I realised, shockingly counter-intuitively, that some record companies were much better than others at making records I liked. So good, in fact, that I could rely on liking records I knew nothing about, save that they were produced by those record companies. I formed the view that these firms must have been run by people who were themselves fans of the specific musics they recorded. The others were just businesses like any other business.

So I cherished Atlantic, Chess, Prestige, Blue Note, Specialty, Pacific Jazz and bought lots of their records. I DIDN'T cherish Columbia, EMI, Decca, RCA Victor, WB, Philips and bought hardly any of their records. These firms cannot be expected to make decent records. If they do, it's an accident.

If I could work this out at 15, why is it news to Elder Don?

MG

Edited September 6, 2007 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[king ubu]

that said, as i think you noted, EMI once upon a time-- & even recently, in classical-- allowed it's global divisions an interesting degree of autonomy... almost all of THAT is sure to be locked up under the new regime as well, of course.

interesting indeed - Universal France did loads of good stuff in the latest 80s and early 90s, to some extent until now (Mingus America 2CD reissue last year, or Great Concert a bit earlier) - think of all the glorious Randy Weston stuff and those nice albums of Teddy Edwards', for instance... and the whole Anniversary/Heritage series run of a few years ago, too. While at the same time, Universal US (and Germany) have wrapped things up and stopped almost any real activity in the jazz segment.

elder don clementine

director of human resources

tuck & patti enterprises

yeah, sure, ride on cowboy! don't waste any human capital, though