EMI $3,012,441,629 in the hole
p2pnet view Music:- “EMI, the music giant controlled by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma, lost a staggering £1.8bn last year leaving it in desperate need of a £120m cash injection to stave off lender Citigroup from taking control of the business,” says the Telegraph.
Wow! That’s a lot a lot of boodle!
At today’s prices, that’s about $3,012,441,629 Canadian.
And 78 cents.
Guess we’d all better dig into our pockets, then, eh?
Two years back, “EMI, a member of the Big 4 organised music cartel, was, spending $400,000 a year on party favors (booze, drugs, women, whatever) for its talent”, p2pnet quoted Silicon Insider as saying.
Now, times are hard for EMI, the broke and busted member of the Big 4 Music Mafia.
The others are Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony Music, and they’re all being sued for price-fixing.
Are things coming unglued at EMI / Terra Firma? – p2pnet wondered in 2007, going on >>>
Now, “Citigroup Inc. rejected a request from Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. to reduce EMI Group Ltd.’s debt by 40 percent in return for a 1 billion-pound ($1.7 billion) cash injection, two people familiar with the talks said,” says Bloomberg News, going on:
“Guy Hands’s private equity firm offered to provide the extra money if Citigroup agreed to reduce the record label’s 2.5 billion-pound debt by a similar amount, said the people, who declined to be named because the talks are private. Citigroup spurned the offer because it would have forced it to write off some of the debt just as EMI’s profit rises, one person said.”
And that’s left EMI “to be run by its own executives, although Hands-appointed non-executives like Lord Birt and former Northern Foods chief executive Pat O’Driscoll remain in place,” says the London Evening Standard, adding:
“Since the takeover, EMI has suffered along with its rivals from the downturn in the music industry and the growth of online piracy.
“It has also been hit by feuding with a string of stars unwilling to be managed by ’suits’, with Joss Stone the latest to hit out at her own recording label.”
So, things have finally come unglued at EMI / Terra Firma.
Adds the Telegraph:
“Mr Hands will now have to persuade investors in Terra Firma to sign over another £120m which would give the group sufficient equity headroom to last until March 2011 or face losing their £2.2bn investment altogether.”
Expect to soon see a puff piece from EMI saying this is a temporary setback and really, things are just peachy.
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Telegraph – EMI runs up loss of £1.8bn, February 5, 2010
p2pnet – EMI: goodby sex ‘n’ drugs for rock’n’roll, January 14, 2008
Silicon Insider – EMI’s $400,000 Coke And Hookers Budget, January 12, 2008
broke and busted – Can Santa save EMI?, December 22, 2009
sued for price-fixing – Big Music in price fixing lawsuit. Again, January 14, 2010
p2pnet – Terra Firma, EMI: out of tune? - October 29, 2007
Bloomberg News – Hands`s Bid to Cut EMI`s Debt Said to Be Rejected by Citigroup, November 16, 2009
London Evening Standard – Citi snub for EMI plan, November 16, 2009
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February 6th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
“EMI $3,012,441,629 in the hole”
Hahaaa!
One corporation of parasite going down! Continue to spray! They are almost done for!
EMI is the second most evil corporation after Vivendique Univers-Sale and before Sony. It is like the first lieutenant of Ben Laden.
To all the criminal terrorists at Vivendique Univers-Sale: YOU ARE NEXT!
February 6th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
“Mr Hands will now have to persuade investors in Terra Firma to sign over another £120m”
And Mr Feet (This is us!) is going to kick the entire nest of pests and parasites into the trash compactor pit!
So long EMI!
February 6th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
One really have to be nuts to invest money in companies with a business plan who is to sue everybody!
Come on!
February 6th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
This is probably the sign that we’re looking for. From what I’ve heard so far, WMG and EMI have been struggling. If things continue at this rate, we’ll have them on their knees in no time.
February 6th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Really good to see, i hope they are all out of business soon
February 6th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Don’t lend money to gamblers.
Don’t travel with the living corpses.
And don’t let finance guys to run your company, they will ruin it by inflating bubbles and gambling on the stock market.
These corporations forgot what they were created for and started to gamble on the stock market instead of doing what they were good to do.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
That page contains a graphic table, and the columns are the following:
Company name
Assets
Liabilities
Large header is “Questionable assets”, and the items below it are
Accounts receivable
Incomplete items, inventory
Property and equipment
Financial instruments
Pension funds
Goodwill
Then follows the “Balance” column which is Assets less Liabilities
Then, the final column is “Balance after 50% of questionable assets were written off and 75% of goodwill were written off”. Many companies have negative values in that column.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
By the way, General Electric is there with financial instruments more than half of its total assets, which looks like a gambling house on the stock market rather than a company making electrical equipment.
And here what says Wikipedia about NBC Universal and General Electric:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Universal
NBC Universal, Inc. is a media and entertainment company formed in May 2004 by the merger of General Electric’s NBC with Vivendi’s Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE).[4][5] General Electric (GE) owns 80% of NBC Universal with the remaining 20% owned by Vivendi.[6] On December 3, 2009, GE and US cable TV operator Comcast announced a buyout agreement for NBC Universal. After the transaction completes, and pending regulatory approval, Comcast will own 51% of NBC Universal while GE will own 49%. As a part of the deal, GE will buy out Vivendi’s 20% minority stake in the company.
No comments…
February 7th, 2010 at 9:20 am
It’s nice to see this boycott is starting to have an effect right where it needed to be felt. Say what you will, it’s hard to stay on your high horse about who you will license and who you won’t license when you don’t have enough money to keep the doors open.
After treating customers, artists, and anyone else who had to deal with the labels like shit, it’s good to see them getting it in the ass at the end. So that’s one fixing to be down, just a few more to follow. Those such as Bono that sold their souls to the devil to take the contract, will sooner or later go down with them. You know if the labels aren’t surviving because of a lack of money, then the artists certainly won’t get paid anything. Not that the labels were very good about paying artists anything other than lip service.
I will drink a beer on the day this label craters to celebrate it’s demise.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
“I will drink a beer on the day this label craters to celebrate it’s demise.”
I will certainly celebrate. Artists have better walk away from these parasites since then only thing that can hapen to them in these “deals” is to be ripped-off.
The funny think about “lobbyism” is that although corporations usually got what they want it often backfired on them big time. They almost never think about all the consequences of what they do.
An exemple is the recent corporate effort to make the government deregulate and globalize brutally and chaotically so that they can export jobs where labor is dirt ship in China and India.
The problem with this, beside the point that this is cheating, is that the people in the already developed countries can no longer buy their stuff since they have no job while the people in China and India can not buy their stuff either because their salaries are too low.
For a little while they managed to delay the crash by deregulating credit and letting people borrow themselves to death.
Then to be able to continue filling up their pocket they suck up money from the government. It is obvious that they are stupid enough to continue pulling on the rope until capitalism collapse. Something must be done.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Any chance of a massive taxpayer bailout of the record companies, modeled after the US banking industry fiasco of a year ago?
February 7th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
They likely won’t be able to bail out all entertainment companies, so they will choose those that are more strategic from propaganda standpoint – it will likely be Hollywood.
“Cinema, for us, is the most important of the arts.” V. I. Lenin.