Signs are that Edgar Bronfman Jr, erstwhile scion of the Seagram distillery fortune, will be the CEO of a combined EMI-Warner Music empire by the end of the year. The two companies, EMI and Warner, both once powerful, free-standing entities in the music game, are now minority players who need each other to have any hope in the deeply troubled and contracting market for recorded music.
After two profit warnings and several management shake-ups, EMI is in no condition to buy Warners. Appointing former Yorkie Bar executive Eric Nicoli to head the company last month telegraphed that it was out of ideas and being readied for sale.
Still, any agreement will be on the premise that Warner's CEO, 52-year- old Bronfman Jr (right, in glasses with Tommy Hilfiger), keeps his top-dog job and it's open to question |
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edward helmore on the man who wrote a hit for Celine Dion
and now aims to run EMI-Warner Music |
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whether he can restore a combined company to health. In the strange, sad story of the music business over the past decade, cut down as much by its own grandeur and folly as by technology that's stripped music of its value to customers, Bronfman has emerged as an interesting, sometimes vainglorious, often quixotic, figure.
It's an unfortunate detail that the Bronfmans would be far wealthier today if they had not sold their sizeable chunk of DuPont stocks to set Junior up in the entertainment business in the mid-90s.
Flush with $9bn in cash, Junior acquired Polygram, then MCA and Universal Pictures, moving the Bronfman clan away from the liquor business (grandfather Sam started it by stockpiling whiskies in Canada during Prohibition) and toward the unpredictable, shark-infested waters of entertainment. He sought a  |
