EMI agree to £3.2bn Takeover bid

• 1st Jun 2007

The bid of £3.2billion, including debt, by US investment company Terra Ferma to buy EMI has been agreed by the music giant.

The board of directors at EMI, whose artists include The Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Coldplay and The Beatles, to name but a few have recommended the bid to shareholders.

Although this offer has been recommended to shareholders, financial experts expect this to just get the ball rolling in terms of offers.

Despite the scale of the prospective takeover, it is unlikely that the case will be recommended to the competition commission due to the fact that it is not a merger with another music company. This would be a major issue were another company such as Warner Music to make a similar offer, and thus is likely to have been a major influence in the Board’s recommendation to shareholders.

The record company has had a troubled year with sales dropping and huge losses, and has been the subject of much speculation as to whether it was a question of when rather than if the giant would be bought. As well as a major decline in tangible record sales, mainly due to the move of consumers towards digital downloads, major artists new releases have not been as successful as expected.

EMI, consisting of EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing, represents over 1300 artist worldwide, with direct operations in over 50 countries, and is currently the world’s largest independent music company. EMI Music’s record labels include EMI, Mute and Virgin.